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A 



THE BIG 



AMERICAN CARAVAN 



IN 



EUROPE. 



) I 



Being Letters descriptive of the Movement: 

on the Continent of Europe of the Largest 

Party of Tourists who ever made the 

Rounds in a Body under one 

Management. 



By BURR H. POLK. 



EVANSV1LE: 
Journal Co., St«am Printers, Binders and Stationers. 
1879. 



^ 




12 

,9 



PREFACE. 



The following letters were written while making a tour en 
the Continent of Europe. There was no idea, at the time, of 
their publication. No pains was taken with them, and they 
were often hurriedly written under the most unfavorable circum- 
stances. Our itinerary aimed to consume all our time, and 
frequently we were at a loss for rest. But for this reason they 
may be all the more acceptable, as they convey the impressions 
that were fresh upon me, and are honest impressions with re- 
gard to things as I saw them. A desire on the part of those 
who made this tour to have the letters, led to their publication, 
and they may not fail to entertain others. The putting through 
s/ this large party in the very height of the tourist season, was cer , 
tainly a mammoth undertaking, and shows to what perfection 
this business has attained. In Switzerland especially, where it 
has been estimated over a million tourists visited during the 
summer, it was a wonder that we experienced no inconvenience 
from delays or over crowding. The weather, for the most part, 
was very propitious and our chances for sight seeing were per- 
haps rarely excelled. 

THE AUTHOR. 



LETTER I. 



The Tourgee Party— Crossing the Ocean— Sea sickness— Fogs and Fog horns— Life 
aboard the Ship— Fourth of July celebrated— Shivering in Mid. summer— 
Almost a collision. 

On Board Ship, July 22, 1879. 

In the uncertain stale of my stomach, with the minor 
hindrance of a little disturbance in the shape of church services 
going" on around and above me, I doubt if I can do justice to 
my friends in the way of a letter. But as a slight calm has 
come over me, I thought best to seize the opportunity and 
make what progress I can while there is allowed to me the 
happy privilege of holding up my head and knowing my name 
and residence. 

This excursion, of which I am now a member, was gotten up 
by Dr. Eben Tourjee, of Boston. He took over a party last * 
Summer, the success of which induced him to take over another 
this year. There are 186 of the party on board this vessel, the ,*. 
Anchoria, while 127 have already gone ahead and are now prob- 
ably out of their misery enjoying a little tour through parts of Ire. 
land. On our arrival at Glasgow the entire band will meet and 
there be divided up into four sections, all to travel over the 
same route but in different order, so as not to have the caravan 
so cumbersome. Twenty-one States are represented by those 
aboard this ship — as far East as Maine, down to Florida on the 
South, and as far West as Kansas and Minnesota. Massachu- 
setts leads with 98, Boston contributing 38 of these, Ohio being 
the State sending the delegation second in size. The "little 



6 . THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN' S 

one," my daughter, and I are the only ones from Mississippi. 
Only two Southern States are represented, there being two 
ladies from Nashville, Tennessee, and one gentleman from Flor- 
ida. Of the 1 86 here. 108 are ladies, showing quite a prepon- 
derance of the fair sex. And thus you have an analysis of the 
handsome little pamphlet liberally distributed to the passengers 
and their friends before the departure of the ship. I may add, 
as an item of interest to bachelors, that much over one-half of 
the ladies are single. 

By a previous arrangement most of the party met at the St. 
Nicholas hotel in New York prior to sailing. On Saturday 
morning early the hotel coach began the no small task of carry- 
ing down passengers and baggage. I went down with the last 
load and found the ship crowded with people and everything in 
a jam and confusion. Hundreds had come on board to bid 
friends and acquaintances good-bye, and groups were standing 
about here and there in earnest converse. It never occurred 
that any familiar face would meet us, but we had that pleasure, 
nevertheless, for nearly an hour before starting we were joined 
by that most genial gentleman, John Bell, of Commodore Pari- 
sot's fleet; and when, an hour later, all visitors had gone upon 
the pier and our vessel was pushing out for the sea, the last we 
saw of his pleasant face was while he was waving his handker- 
chief, with hundreds of others, and bidding us God speed and 
a pleasant voyage. He is the only home friend we have seen 
since leaving Cincinnati. We were to have been accompanied 
by a charming young lady of Vicksburg, but the trivial circum- 
stance of contemplated matrimony prevented her coming, and 
we have been out of humor with Cupid ever since. 

As we steamed out of the bay at noon, in comparatively smooth 
water, the passengers loitered about the decks and cheerfully 
contemplated the scene, but after we got "outside" and fell in 
with a pretty stiff breeze and rough water, the numerous reclin- 
ing chairs were soon filled and looked like so many occupied 
cots in an army hospital. Those who had not providid them- 
selves with these chairs' generally disappeared and perhaps were 
not seen on deck any more that day. As for myself, I braved 
it out on deck as loiw as I could, When I went on board, the 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 7 

sensitiveness of my nasal organ over the unpleasant smells (and 
there are very, very many unpleasant smells about a ship) was 
an unfavorable omen. Still, as I saw victim after victim on this 
hand and that, I hoped, in a feeble way, that the little cruise I 
took two years ago among the islands in the Gulf of Mexico, 
would be of service to me here. But such hope proved a de- 
lusion and a fraud. It was not long before I joined the throng 
at the railing, and began a series of pilgrimages between that 
and my chair until four o'clock in the afternoon, when I grew 
so terribly sick and drunk and worthless, that I fled to my close 
and stifling room below. How I writhed down there in the 
arms of this awful monster of the sea, I think I will never be 
able to describe. Later, asleep, I forgot the billows, but the 
moment I awoke I became conscious of the rolling and pitch- 
ing of the vessel. The room was away forward, and contained 
four berths, two running lengthwise and two at right angles with 
the ship. I occupied the lower one of the latter two. The 
wind was quartering with our course, and as the ship mounted 
a wave she twisted awfully to one side, and as she plunged 
down into the trough of the sea she swung up and twisted the 
other way, thus giving to one's person a species of rotary mo- 
tion that made his stomach feel as though it contained a rest- 
less, uneasy lump as big as a foot ball, The greater number 
of passengers were sick, but most of them for a short time only, 
while others were pitiable invalids for so long a time as to wish 
themselves comfortably at home and Tourjee's excursion in Pat- 
agonia. I may safely be classed with the latter. I fasted 
literally from Saturday morning till Sunday morning, when I 
ventured down to the table. I looked with an air of deter- 
mination on my countenance, and attempted to walk bravely 
up one of the aisles, but had scarcely reached the farther end 
where there was a vacant seat, when I turned sadly about and 
rushed up stairs and out on deck to contribute, for the forty- 
ninth time, my share of food to the active little gulls that 
were continually skimming the foaming billows behind us, I 
count — we have now been four days out and I think, so far as 
• the records show, I have been the very sickest man in the 
party, and am utterly disgusted with my stomach. I can ap- 



X THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

preciate and measurably forgive the insufferable and provoking 
vanity of a man whose stomach behaves itself while those 
around him are continually casting up their Jonahs. 

At the very moment I penned the memorandum upon which 
the above painful remarks were based, a joyous party came out 
from the dining-table and regaled me with a description of the 
choice and bounteous dinner just served down stairs. Of 
course, as I lay prone upon my reclining chair, awaiting a call 
to the railing, I enjoyed this timely kindness in the fullest sense 
But let me pass from this subject. It is harrowing to my feel- 
ings. I feel that when I reach Europe much of my enjoyment 
there will be marred by the contemplation of a repetition of this 
thing on my return home. I have heard two or three declare 
with the most powerful emphasis, that no excursion, after they 
reach home, will ever tempt thim across the ocean again; and 
so far as I am personally concerned, if I retain my senses and 
my memory, I think the scenery of America will suit me to a 
dot. But those who do not suffer materially — and they consti- 
tute a very large majority — find much to enjoy in a voyage of 
this kind, and will always be ready to repeat it when occasion 
offers. 

I have been astonished at the cool winds we have encountered 
off the coast of Maine, and that now blow as we plow through 
the pale blue waters on the banks of Newfoundland. Every 
book we read and every person we consulted on the subject, 
warned us to bring our heaviest wraps, but there are some 
things hard to realize, just as hard as it was for my friends to 
understand, while I was in the mountains of Colorado writing 
of snows and ice in July and they sweltering in the hot sun of 
the South, that the truth was in me. I could not get it into my 
head that there was any sense in bringing an immense overcoat 
and a horse blanket to swathe my person in during a passage 
across the ocean in July; but I now know the necessity for it, 
and would say to those likely ever to make the trip, to bringall 
their own wraps and to pilfer all they can from their neighbors. 
On one or two occasions the wind whistled through my thick 
overcoat, apparently with as much ease as it would through a 
seive. Those ladies who are the most outlandishlv "bundled 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 9 

up" and look most like animated mummies, are the most com- 
fortable. Many of these have been enabled to occupy their re- 
clining chairs night and day on deck and thus avoid the close and 
ill-smelling rooms below. 

It has been very foggy much of the journey so far, and the 
fog whistle has been going at intervals throughout the entire 
journey. Here on the banks of Newfoundland the water is of a 
much paler blue than any we had heretofore encountered, and 
the fog has been so dense at times we could not see a ship two 
lengths of our own vessel. At noon to-day, just four days out, 
the log indicated that we had made 1226 miles, which is re- 
garded as above the average speed. At that rate we will reach 
Scotland one day or more in advance of our time. If we should 
sight the Irish coast to-morrow, there is one excursionist, at 
least, who would rejoice. 

Afternoon of the second day out, they cleared a space on the 
after hurricane deck and played a game called pitch; with no 
pitch in it, a species of old fashioned hop-skotch in which blocks 
are shoved at the marked field with a long stick. At night 
there was a concert in the cabin, which was pronounced good ; 
and later there was quite a blow, great phosphorescent lights 
around and in the wake of the ship, and a rainbow by moon- 
light, none of which I saw. But as I lay in my berth, down in 
the tomb-like room, I could hear the roaring and thundering of 
the sea as the billows dashed against the sides of the ship, but 
if she had stood upon her head and wallowed over and over in 
the raging sea, I don't think my poor excuse of a stomach 
would have acted more disgustingly. Last Sunday we had an 
appropriate and entertaining sermon under the awning, and it 
being the day after departure and the temporary pulpit erected 
amid the array of invalids, the learned pastor had a^large con- 
gregation if he did not have an attentive one. This morning 
we had short Episcopal Church services ; this afternoon we had 
chorus singing, and now, as I write, I hear the strains of the 
organ at one end of the gallery over the cabin, and the piano 
at the other. To-night we are to have our third series of enter- 
tainments in the way of readings, recitations, music and the 
like. I heard one last night and was very much entertained 
indeed. 

2 



IO THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

There is almost a total absence of the signs of fish up here off 
Newfoundland. We have seen only two small schools of por- 
poises and nothir g else. Were we sailing in the Gulf of Mexi- 
co we would rarely be out of sight of the denizens of the deep, 
but constantly be in sight of great schools of fish and my old 
friends, the sharks. It may be that when we cross the Gulf 
stream we will fall in with some of these. I hope so, at least- 
I am tired seeing this vast waste of water with nothing to break 
the monotony. An iceberg would not go amiss, especially a 
large one, and Ave should pass it at a safe distance. But I 
would like above all things, to see this dense fog clear away 
and the bright sunshine to thaw out and enable me to realize 
that this" was July instead of midwinter. I am absolutely shiv- 
ering with cold, here in the parlor, with all the thick clothes I 
have on my back, and my undergarments doubled. You may 
understand this when I tell you it is just 43 degrees colder than 
on the day I left home. 

Night, July 5. — I add a few words, to say, among other things, 
that we had an intolerable fog for seven blessed days and nights 
— a most outlandish, cold, penetrating fog which has prevented 
enjoyment on deck. Yesterday being the 4th, we got up a little 

f celebration on our own account and kicked up auite a smoke. 
There was a big procession around and about the ship, of men 
with horns.'pans, trumpets, tin cans and the like; hoisting and 
cheering the flags ; firing of crackers ; speeches, toasts, songs 
and such, during the day. The Captain of the ship was called 
out and gave us a nice little talk, and upon the whole we had 
a jolly time. At night, there were more speeches, recitations 
and instrumental and vocal music in the cabin. A large part of 
to-day has been devoted to the selection of sections to be taken 
by the party, and there has been a perfect Babel. The matter 
has now'been pretty generally and satisfactorily arranged. 

We ;"came near 'having a collision this morning. Before 

breakfast, and as a few of the early risers were on deck astern, 

, and the fog so dense one could not see more than the length of 

our ship, the whistle blew two shriil blasts, and in an instant a 

full rigged sailing vessel, with all its canvass spread, suddenly 



« 



emerged from the fog like some phantom bearing down upon 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 1 

us. She came quartering, and in less than thirty seconds would 
have struck us amidships, but when the whistle blew she luffed 
up and gave us her side, but as she passed us and drifted astern 
she came so near rubbing us we could plainly see the faces of 
the few men astir upon her. In less than one minute from the 
time she came in ^view, amid the cheers of the startled little 
band watching her, she had disappeared in the fog behind us. 
It was too close a graze to leave a favorable impression, and I 
notice the fog-whistle has since been blown with greater 
regularity. 



12 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN*? 



LETTER II. 



First sight of land on the Irish Coast — Among the Canny Scots — A trip up the 
Clyde — Its Scenery — Glasgow— Hotel— Magnificent accommodations— A stroll 
over the City and an incident of Scotch life— Cathedrals and Castles to the 
front — The Big Caravan looking like animated bundles of wraps— Jammed 
by the crowd of People. 

Glasgow, Scotland, July 8th, 1870. 

On Monday afternoon as the first table were at dinner, and 
making a fearful hole in the stores, there rang out the joyous 
cry of "land !" In an instant all was confusion and a stampede 
to the port-holes, and out upon the deck to witness the spec- 
tacle. Sure enough, away off through the mist where ail seem- 
ed dark, there stood out a darker and irregular outline of the 
high bluffs on the northern coast of Ireland. It was not a very 
satisfactory view of land, still, the land was there, and it did our 
hearts so much good to have ocular demonstration of the fact. 
We ran along the coast for an hour or more, coming closer un- 
til the cheerful green of the hills came plain' -. Then 
we skirted by some rocky islands against which the angry Avatfes 
lashed themselves into foam as the spray was thrown high into 
the air; then by a light house ; then by some residences on the 
checkered slope that ran down to the sea; then by a station 
where a boat came out with a pilot ; then between an island, 
with high and rugged bluffs, and the main land to Movilie where 
a tug came out in answer to sky rockets and calcium lights, and 
brought a great batch of morning papers from Londonderry, 



TOUR THUOUGH EUROPE. 1 3 

and took off a large numberfof our steerage passengers. It was 
raining and cold, and the disembarkation of these returning em- 
igrants appeared a gloomy J one as they went off our big ship 
down into the tug, lighted by the sickly glare of the lanterns as 
they struggled with the fog. But all our people were happy, 
and very few stayed on deck to witness the departure of our 
fellow voyagers. 

At just nine o'clock, before reaching Movih , the heavens 
cleared up some and the mists drifted away '" >m the shore, 
giving us one grand view. Cheer after cheer rang out from 
that ship, and the people felt good for the rest of the night. 

Here the agent of Gaze & Son came on board, and at once 
began the task of arranging the little parties in the different sec _ 
tions who were to room together on the two months journey 
ahead of us. It was one o'clock at night when he got through, 
and the steward had driven us all out of the cabin by turning 
down the lights. 1 his morning, or, going on deck, I found we 
were steaming up t. -: channel towards Greenoch. The 

day was dark and tkrc - , but the shores were beautifully 

green, laid off in little pal \i :s separated by hedges, and 
terminating in. hills against the horizon. There did not appear 
to be a foot of available land not utilized. Ev rybitof it seem- 
ed to be in cultivation where there was any soil, and the foliage 
$Mi a variety of shades about, it that rendered the view very 
pleasant indeed. I would like to describe my feelings for this 
da}/. I can not do it. The scene was so new to me, the land- 
scape so cheerful, arid the houses, and Jthe way of cutting the 
the land up ii%L<> wee bits of patches, so edd, that my interest in 
the picture amounted almost to excrement. Persons who have 
come over here for the first time*, after dreaming year after 
year of the trip, and having undergone the miseries of a voy- 
age dot often encountered, may be able to appreciate the feel- 
ings of our party as the country lay spread out, for the first 
time before them. No others could, even though the picture 
should be drawn by the most graphic pen. 

At 7 o'clock we anchored off Greenoch and a large, side- 
wheel tug came out to carry away the baggage. It took two of 
them to do it. A. "little, dirty urchin,' with a timid voice, as 



T4 'THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 

though he was frightened by the pilgrims, made his appear- 
ance in the cabin with the Glasgow morning papers. He didn't 
sing out strong and recklessly, like an American newsboy would 
have done. It had been the intention to go ashore at Green- 
och and take cars for this city, but by a vote last night it was 
decided that we should take one of the swift steamers that ply 
between the two great places and run up the Clyde. As we lay 
there having the necessary chalk marks put upon our trunks by 
the Custom-house officer (which was a mere formal matter, in 
our case, though requiring two hours — for they had never had 
as big a batch before, ) we could see Roseleith Castle, the prop 
erty of the Duke of Argyle, and where our neighbor, the Mar- 
quis of Lome, spent his honeymoon. I speak of it specially 
because it was the first live castle I had ever seen and I wanted 
to make a sort of landmark of the fact. I don't want to go into 
the castle business too strongly, but hope to fill up my letters 
with a recital of minor details which, though I have almost al- 
ways found entertaining to me, most writers have omitted. 
Nearly all of the guide books can give you a history of these 
castles and a list of the nabobs who have held them, but they 
rarely ever tell you if they give you hash at this hotel or pea 
soup at that. Of course I will have to own I have seen a castle 
now and then, and perhaps when I am short of material may 
throw in a descriptive paragraph or so. 

I was glad of the change to a steamer for a run up the Clyde. 
It was a most enchanting trip till we neared this city, and it 
was entertainining all the way. Beside, I didn't like the looks 
of the dumpy cars I saw as we steamed by the station at Green. 
och. I don't think I will ever overcome my preconceived ideas 
of and prejudices against them. But let me hurry on here. 
Directly after leaving Greenoch we passed Dunbarton Castle, a 
very ordinary sort of stone house stuck at the base of and 
against a huge solid stone mound that would have been all the 
more attractive without the Castle. On the left of us the rocky 
promontories reached nearly to the proportions of mountains, but 
always covered with trees or grass or grain where there was any 
soil. On the right, the country sloped gradually from the river 
and was often cultivated to the very edge of the quay. Houses 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. . I $ 

were nestled about everywhere. The entire distance appeared 
like a continuous village, blooming out, every three or four 
miles, into quite a town, where we made landings, as quick as 
you could say Jack Robinson, to put off and take on passengers. 
We passed another castle, (confound them, I fear they will be in 
my way) old, tumbled down and ivy-grown, when every one 
said "how beautiful!" and indeed it was so. It enabled me to 
see how ivy can ornament and render attractive decaying and 
unsightly ruins. The buo3^s and light-houses and other devices 
to mark the channel, were very numerous and varied in their 
character and construction. The river is so narrow a little be- 
low the city any Scottish lad ten years old can cast a pebble 
across it. In some places the banks are literally lined with 
ship yards, where great iron vessels are under process of con- 
struction — and the scene is a busy one. As we met the thirty 
or forty steamers similar to our own, going down the river, the 
passengers would look with a species of awe upon our hooded 
and cloaked and bundled up crowd. There was a strong, coo^ 
breeze blowing, with spits of rain every once in a while, and I 
think I never saw a more ungraceful looking set in my life than 
our party appeared just then. When we reached the station, 
in the city, where we went ashore, an immense crowd soon col- 
lected, and while we were filing off the wharf to the line of ve- 
hicles in waiting for us, it took half a score of policemen to pre. 
vent our being jammed. Some of our vehicles were double- 
decked omnibusses, with a stairway astern leading to the top, 
and held thirty or forty passengers. They were drawn by three *> 
horses abreast, the middle animal between shafts, which gave 
the appearance of two poles instead of one. I climbed upon 
top, the better to see. The remarks of the throng around us 
were humorous. They spoke of us as "sight-seers," " Ameri- ^ 
cans," etc. All except section one were driven to the Grand 
Hotel — that section went to Cockburn's. At the Hotel we ■;& 
found our rooms already assigned, and, upon registering, were 
handed a slip of paper with the number upon it which enabled 
us to reach it with the aid of one or more of the two dozen or so f 
of female servants eager to get her clasp upon our hand parcels. 
The Hotel is a new one, large and handsomely furnished, 



1 6 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

and resembles an American hotel only so far as it has gas 
throughout and soap at the wash stands. Everything has an 
odd look, but a substantial one. The rooms are furnished in 
wood resembling dark cherry, a drugget or carpet covering 
about four-fifths of the floor, the bare part being highly polished 
and waxed. The bedsteads are metal throughout, the head 
and foot being of brass, in which you could make your toilet in 
the absence of a looking glass, and the balance is of bronzed 
iron. I have critically examined one, and I think the concep- 
tion must have been that of a sensitive traveler who had often 
been burdened with too many voracious bed-fellows, The 
dining-room, I think, is the handsomest I ever saw ; not gor- 
geous in gewgaws and gingerbread work, but solid, clean, airy 
and quiet. It seemed even to have a soothing effect upon our 
boisterous caravan, for they toned down here and submitted to 
the tedious dinner courses in which they had as little voice in 
selecting as the man in the moon, with such grace as to give 
assurance that they did not intend to kick against the customs 
of the country. There was one apparently solid and unbroken 
table running the entire length of three.sides of the room, a sort 
of family concern, where your destinies are placed in the hands 
of the very few dandy waiters who officiated. 

On arrival, we lunched at I o'clock, a special arrangement. 
There was not much of it, but what there was was nice and well 
cooked, all cold except the potatoes, and on your own plate 
when you sat down. At lunch there were the tiniest little bits 
of butter at great distances apart, ,fJ and at dinner, eaten by us as 
early as seven, there was no visible trace of this article of food, 
I had noticed the same trouble aboard the ship. At that rate 
of consumption I wonder what becomes of the tons of it which 
every ship coming from our own country brings here, Perhaps 
it is manufactured into pomatums or worked up into machine 
grease. I can't think the natives consume no more of it than is 
fed to Americans that it gets away as an article of food. The 
hotel is exclusively in charge of ladies. One £or two porters to 
wrestle with the heavy baggage, and the waiters who keep con- 
stantly dressed, ^though ready to rush off to the next dress 
ball, and the fellow who shines the boots, are the only males 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1/ 

on duty here. No supercilious, high-flown, shallow-brained 
popinjay behind the counter to freeze you with his loftiness and 
his idiotic stare, but neatly dressed ladies within the office that 
is encased with glass, to politely and quietly see to your wishes. 

After lunch, having some necessary purchases to make, the 
"little one" and I took an aimless stroll about the city and 
among the stores, leisurely sauntering by the windows and ci- 
phering out the value of the articles on exhibition from the 
prices, in shillings and pence, that in most cases were marked 
upon them. Some of them appeared cheap, while others did 
not. We had been told prices were generally high here. But 
we bought a few things, however, including some trinkets, and 
fell into such confusion over our first endeavor to become ac- 
customed to the coin of the realm, that before I knew it my 
pockets were so full of silver and their ugly copper pennies and 
half pennies that my suspenders would hardly bear the great 
weight. The stores are very small and the doors are nearly all 
closed as though it were Winter. We did not intend to go to 
the Cathedral with the party, but in our tramp got into that 
neighborhood and went there. It is an old place and seems to 
be suffering for want of air. The lower part, down where the dead 
are buried, is dark and damp and not calculated to be beneficial 
to rheumatic people. There are two great organs whose largest 
pipes seemed to me as though they might be as big as the chim- 
neys of a Sunflower river steamer. The windows were the chief 
attraction. But if there had been other things they could not 
have been seen that dark afternoon. So our stay here was brief. 

Near this Cathedral was the Necropolis, the burying ground 
of this city. It has many imposing monuments, plainly visible 
a square or so away, but as it was growing late we did not walk 
through it, On our return we passed the prison. We had 
noted the shabby appearance of the neighborhood of the Cathe- 
dral, and as we retraced our steps we saw an excited assembly 
of dirty looking men, women and children, and soon heard the 
cry of "police! police!" and on the instant a woman rushed in 
our direction, with hair streaming in the wind and terror in her 
face, followed by a drunken man bent on destruction. Unfor- 
fortunately the woman caromed on me, and as she aid so grab- 
3 



1 8 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

bed me and made a species of breastworks of my person, while 
her pursuer chased her around and about, and made several 
efforts to strike her over my shoulders, till I feared I would be 
the only victim in the case. Directly, however, a burly team- 
ster came up, took in the situation, and taking hold of the irate 
man, gave him a good shaking and gave me freedom. Three 
noble-looking policemen passed by just then, casually glanced 
at the melee, smiled feebly, and went on. Perhaps they had 
not formally gone on duty for that day. 

We passed St. George's Square, where there are several mon- 
uments, and around which are located the Post-office and most 
of the principal hotels of the city, and went home in a rain. Not 
an hour before I had bought an umbrella and cut a figure by 
having it sent to the hotel. A programme for the morrow, 
posted up in the dining room, announced that we would break- 
fast at six and leave the hotel at seven in the morning, for a 
tour, by rail and coach, to Loch Lomond, through the Tros- 
sachs, to Loch Katrine, Dunbarton, CaJlender and Stirling, to 
Edinburg, at which place we will be due at half past seven in the 
afternoon. So, as the day is to be an unusually big one, and it 
is now past one at night, I will pass Glassgow for the present 
and go to a bed that has appeared very inviting for hours. 
There is much more to be said, and many of my memorandums 
have not been checked off, but I must sleep and rest, and trust 
to the future to touch up the more important points not yet 
mentioned. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE, 1 9 



LETTER III. 



Leaving Edihburg— Early breakfast— Division of the Caravan— Ballock and Loch 
Lomoad-On the Lake— Duke of Montrose's deer park— Scottish cattle and 
sheep— Ben Lomond, the highest mountain in Scotland— American Flag-- 
Trip to Loch Katrine -The kind of coaches— Scenery— Walk up the hill- 
Stone houses— Many historic places— Stacks of peet— Scarcity of fuel— Callan- 
der—Stirling— More about castles— Greyfriar's Church— The Royal Hotel— 
The Scott Monument— Museum, &c. 

Edinburg, Scotland, July 10. 

After writing the above date and address I sat for some time 
trying to decide what character I would give my letter. I am 
still undecided, I don't just see how to get the doings of the 
day in one letter, and yet I feel that I can't bear to abbreviate. 
As indicated by the programme posted the day before, we yes- 
day took breakfast at 6 o'clock and entered the cars ai/. One 
section came direct to this place and arrived early in the fore- 
noon. The other section for Balloch, the southern extremity 
of Loch Lomond, the scene of Scott's Lady of the Lake, where 
they were transferred to a steamer which carried them to Invers- 
naid, a distance of twenty-three miles, crossing the lake five 
times in the journey, and landing at Balmada, Luss, Rowarden- 
nan and Tarbet. Directly after leaving, we passed Inch Mur- 
rin, the Duke of Montrose's deer park. This Scottish gentle- 
tleman owns a matter of twenty-five miles square of the historic 
highlands, and his sheep and cattle clip the grass and chew the 
cud of contentment upon the territory made famous by history 



20 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

and song. I fancied these animals felt their importance, for 
there was an air of contentment about them, and they seemed 
utterly unmoved, in any way, by the vast cavalcade invading 
their domains. I may say that the cattle were few, but that 
sheep were about in ail directions as far as the eye could see or 
the country be brought within range of a field-glass. And they 
were splendid fellows, their long wool often hanging nearly to 
the ground. 

In this little run we passed the gate of the Highlands, the 
Isle of Woman and Drunkard's Island, a place once used for 
curing men of drunkenness — the mountains called The Cobbler 
and his Wife, Ben Lomond, and a great number of others that 
have their history and legends but which I have forgotten now. 
But Lomond is the tallest mountain in Great Britain, being 
3,-170 feet high. We arrived at Inversnaid at half-past ten. 
The American flag was flapping in the breeze in front of the 
hotel here, and of course we had to cheer it. I presume if the 
time had been given us we would have felt in duty bound to go 
in and eat a high-priced lunch through sheer gratitude for this 
show of American patriotism on the part of the proprietors. 
But we hadn't time for this as the coaches were in waiting to 
carry us over to Loch Katarine, a distance of five or six miles. 
These coaches are made especially for tourists. There is a low, 
box-like, covered body into which whatever baggage there may 
be is carried, and across the top of this are four seats, including 
that of the driver, each capable of comfortably seating four per- 
sons, three seats facing to the front, that behind the driver 
facing to the rear. They are very strong and are drawn by 
splendid horses, generally four to each, between the two lakes, 
though the one I got upon had only two, which gave the gen- 
tlemen in the party the privilege of walking to the summit of 
the mountain. I di<~l not regret it. My Colorado experience 
made it light work, albeit I wore my overcoat, the pockets of 
which were stuffed with something less than a ton of guide 
books, rubber shoes belonging to the ladies ot the party and 
other trinkets too tedious to mention. 

The scene was very beautiful to me, and wonderously so to 
those who had not seen a Mountainous country before. The 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 21 

Highlands resemble, in a great measure, some of the districts 
down in Southwestern Colorado, and though not so grand and 
awe-inspiring, have the advantage of being, in most cases, 
clothed in verdure of various shades to their summits. Now 
and then I heard the roar of the little waterfalls, and away be- 
low, on the right, ran quite a stream towards Loch Lomond. 
As I walked up, I several times, inadvertently, went to the 
edge of the cliffs and looked down to see if there were any signs 
of trout. I had no doubt they were there in abundance, but as 
I neither had the time nor a permit from the Duke to angle in 
the water of his domains, I passed on to the summit and climb- 
ed upon the coach when it came up. In this ride several noted 
places were pointed out to us, among which were an old fort 
near the road, erected in 1 7 1 3 to overawe Rob Roy (alias Rob- 
ert Macgregor Campbell) and the hut in which Helen, his wife, 
was born. On looking at the hut there was no wonder at Helen 
being the woman she was. In an hour from starting we reach- 
ed Stronachlachler, at the western end of Loch Katrine, where 
we spent the time rowing upon the lake, gathering flowers, and 
climbing the adjoining mountain. The only buildings here are 
the handsome hotel and outhouses, all of stone. And it may 
be just as well to say now, that I have not seen a brick or frame 
house, so far, in Scotland. The last one of them is stone, which 
gives to them an air of permanence truly pleasing. The resi- 
dences are superb, and . the public buildings are royal. One 
don't feel afraid of storms, nor very much of fire. What a 
contrast, in this respect, between this and our own country! 

At half past 1 2 the Rob Roy steamed up from the other end 
of the lake, put off a party of tourists, took ours aboard and 
steamed back to the other end, where we took another set of 
coaches for Callander. Loch Katerine, the guide books tell us, 
is the grandest lake in Scotland. I am willing to believe it. In 
this run we passed many noted places, among which were the 
peaks of Ben An and Ben Venu, and Ellen's Isle. On taking 
the coaches again, we soon entered the territory called the 
Trossachs, the foot hills or lower ranges of the Highlands, and 
after a two mile drive, stopped for lunch at the elegant hotel 
which stands above the road side. I don't just understand 



22 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

how the lordly Duke of Montrose was induced to allow these 
hotels to be erected on his premises for fear of some one scar- 
ing his sheep. He certainly is apprehensive about his sheep, 
for a little further on, where the road passes at the foot of Ben 
Lodi, there are two sign boards a quarter of a mile apart, re- 
questing tourists who visit the mountain, not to stray upon the 
moor for fear of upsetting the sheep. I looked for a path to 
the mountain, but there was none, and consequently the sign 
was unintelligible to me. 

After lunch we proceeded to Callander, which we reached at 
four o'clock, passing en route, Loch Achray, the glen, Loch 
Vennachar, the water works of Glasgow, over forty miles dis- 
tant, the bridge of Tark, and Colantogle Ford, where Fitz 
James fought with Roderick Dhu. At Callander a special train 
was waiting to carry us to Sterling. The road we drove over 
was a magnificent one, in perfect order, while the foliage, on 
either hand, was generally in full bloom, and kept the ladies in 
a continual state of excitement. Most of the soil is wet and 
boggy, even far up the mountain sides, and is fit only for graz- 
ing purposes. In many places we saw where they had dug and 
stacked up peet to dry for use as fuel. Timber is quite scarce 
in most places, and I guess the Duke don't allow the few tenants 
he has in that region to burn any of it. 

We sped through the country and towns along the road to 
Stirling without stopping, and reached there in half an hour. 
Leaving our hand baggage we tumbled out and proceeded di- 
rectly to the Castle. There it goes again. I can't help it. The 
country is full of them. As I sit here in the hotel I look out 
my window and see an immense one frowning down upon the 
city from a great bluff in the heart of Edinburg. The whole 
history of the country and people are connected and interwoven 
with castles. Their kings and queens lived within their un- 
sightly walls and reared and educated their children within 
them. I would rather it would have been them than myself. 
They generally had a good view of the country, of course, and 
had the satisfaction, often, of seeing their enemies march up 
and squat around and starve them out, but I fancy their home 
comforts were few and their list of luxuries shorter than my 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 23 

little finger, unless written in a very bold and scattering hand. 
I saw a chair of James the VI, and one of James II, and the 
"little one" sat down in them, and I will take my affidavit that 
almost any ordinary, old, straight-backed wooden chair in a dar- 
kle cabin, in the South, would sit as easy. So you must ex- 
cuse me if I find it impossible to keep out of the castle business, 
as I had intended. 

In many respects Stirling is one of the 'most historic places 
in Scotland. The things enacted there and in view of the 
castle furnished much material for Scottish history and song. 
The castle seems to have been erected in detachments at dif- 
ferent dates, and with little apparent order. The people of 
those times had a queer conception of architecture — at least in 
this part of the hemisphere. The statistics of the castle in 
question go back as far as Alexander I, who died in it in 1124. 
Mary, Queen of Scots, was crowned here, and some miserable 
old scoundrel got Douglas in, and had him pitched out one of 
the windows, after having him stabbed, and broke his neck. 
The present Queen has put in a memorial glass in the window 
through which Douglas was thrown. The guide books are 
full of this castle, and the guide who conducted the squad I was 
with, had committed the entire batch to memory, and practiced 
it daily in his garret when he had no tourist to bore with his 
twaddle. The distance from the walls to the valley, through 
which winds the Forth, is 340 feet, and the view of the surround- 
ing country is said to be unequalled anywhere in Great Britain. 
It is very easy to take this as a fact. I think I never saw a 
more magnificent sight, leaving entirely out of question ail feel- 
ings brought up by a knowledge of the events which occurred 
upon the the territory covered by the vision. 

The town itself is the oddest looking place. The narrow 
street that leads up the hill to the castle is more crooked than a 
dog's hind leg, and literally jammed with funny houses. For 
the first time I disregarded my temperance principles in the 
Old World, and dropped into one of those houses and took a 
glass of wine. Upon asking the price the vendor replied, as it 
sounded to me, "tup punce, hay penny" — inflection on the 
word "hay," He was too much for me, but pulling out a hand- 



24 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

full of miserable coppers and holding them towards him, he took 
out two pennies and one half penny— in other words, my glass 
of wine reduced my finances in the neighborhood of five cents 
in civilized coin. 

Adjoining the castle is the Greyfriar's Church, founded in 
1594, and in it John Knox preached a sermon at the coronation, 
there, of James the VI. It was the church of the martyr Guth- 
rie and of Ebenezer Erskine, one of the founders of the United 
Presbyterian Church. I did not go to it. The day's work had 
floored the "little one" and myself, and we sauntered back to 
the depot. I presume we did not miss much. A lady of the 
party told me she had gone there, and as she was strolling 
through the aisles of the building she remarked to a lady near 
her, it seemed strange that she should be in the very Church 
whose pews had been occupied by renowned persons hundreds 
of years ago, and that in reply the lady, with a shrug of the 
shoulder, said it looked like a mighty old-fashioned thing to her, 
and she couldn't see what there was in it for people to come 
trotting so far to see. I expect the place had a mouldy smell 
to her, and she had left her ammonia in her satchel in the car. 

When we reached the depot we learned that our train would 
back up on the track on the farther side, so that to reach it we 
would have to cross over. Well, sir, they made us go up a 
flight of stairs, cross the road through a covered bridge, and 
come down on the other side, when there was not a train or a 
single car in sight, our train being somewhere out of town. 
One or two stragglers coming up and seeing the party across on 
the opposite side of the depot, started across the tracks as 
though they were at home, but a guard stopped them and sent 
them overland. They have some regard for life in this country. 

To the minute our train ran up, was soon filled, the doors 
locked and the train speeding away for this city, which we 
reached at half-past seven. The whole party — all sections — 
were quartered at the Royal Hotel where we found the rooms 
already assigned and the baggage in them and unstrapped. 
Dinner began at a quarter after eight and finished in one hour 
— too late for the theater. The hotel is a fine one and the 
view irom its Iront windows is one which, it seems to me, would 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. ?5 

never become commonplace or irksome. The rooms are hand- 
some and the beds are as inviting as it is possible for them to be, 
the sheets and pillow-slips being the nicest linen. 

This morning I took another stroll about the city and was 
continually running against monuments and buildings of inter- 
est, including the Albert Memorial, that cost $40,000, the Scott 
Monument, in front of our hotel, that cost $75,000, and many 
other handsome and imposing ones. I went a part of the way 
up the Scott Monument but gave out upon reaching the mu- 
seum, which I entered and saw the few relics there. Among 
them was an autograph note written in 1832 by Walter Scott, 
inviting some one to attend the funeral of his father, and a pro- 
gramme of the Royal Theater of the same date, announcing the 
play of Rob Roy Macgregor, and closing with the information 
that the next week would open with Othello, with Mr. Keene 
in the role of that name. 

Some seventy went to Roslin Castle, others went to Abbots- 
ford and Melrose Abbey, while some went to all these, and 
others drove about over the city. I purchased stereoscopic views 
of the first two places, and after nocn laid up to work on this 
letter and get a rest. Since I began the letter, parties have 
been returning and regaling me with high wrought descriptions 
of what they have seen, until I have been so worked up I think 
I will never squander any hours in doors another day. It is 
the first day that has been without more or less rain for weeks, 
and the streets were thronged with people. In my rambles I 
came across a Punch and Judy show which I witnessed with a 
great crowd and no little satisfaction. 

The programme for to-morrow is to take in the lions of the 
city, including two more castles, and at nine o'clock at night 
leave by rail for London, stopping at Kenilworth and Warwick 
on Saturday long enough to see the things there and frighten 
the people, To-day being a day extra in this place on account 
of the arr'val of the ship one day ahead of time, the action of 
each was independent and at his own expense, but to-morrow 
will be under the printed programme, which covers the entire 
tour, in charge of our own conductors. I will go to bed and 
prepare for it by taking a rest. The first and fifth sections are 
4 



26 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

to breakfast at five in the morning, and travel over our route of 
yesterday, though in reversed order, and return here in time 
to join us before leaving for London. They have a big day 
before them, and while they will be about crazy over the things 
they will see on the trip, they will be very tired on returning 
here to take the night ride in a train without sleepers. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 2J 



LETTER IV. 



A second letter from Edinburg— A drive about the city— The attention we attracted 
—John Knox's house— The. way the streets are named— Craigmillar ( astle— 
Edinboro Castle— Parliament Buildings— Queen Mary's bed room— Dudding- 
ton's Church— Holyrood Palace— Portraits of Scotland's Kings — Visit to a 
Scottish Court -Curled and powdered wigs— Prepare to leave Scotland. 

Edinburg, Scotland, July n, 1879. 

I did not think I would write another letter about this place. 
Two can only give a skimming of what is to be seen here. In 
order to do justice to Scotland, one ought to spend a month 
within its territory. On coming over here I think but very few 
of the party anticipated much pleasure from that part of the 
tour which led through Scotland, but rather looked beyond it 
for that which was to please. The visit has been an agreeable 
surprise to most of them, and as for myself, I don't think it pos- 
sible for me to derive more pleasure from anything that is ahead 
of us. One thing I regret, and that is, that I was not better 
posted in the history of the country before I left home. Still," I 
can now read it with an interest that I could not have had be- 
fore. 

Our party left the hotel at nine o'clock, in open vehicles, one 
half going one way and the Other another. Either was a big 
caravan, and attracted much attention, even in this place, where 
gangs of tourists, at this season of the year, are numerous and 
often very large. In one narrow street, called Canongate, that 
passes by the old Tolbooth of that name, and is a continuation 
of Netherbow, upon which is located John Knox's house, the 
crowd was immense, and the shouting of the urchins and girls 
was almost deafening. This, of course, brought the inmates of 



28 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

houses to the doors and windows, so that we had about as much 
attention paid us as is usually accorded to a circus pageant on 
show day. Our course lay out the Dalkeith road, the old stage * 
route towards the south, and gave us a fine view of the country. 
As we drove through the city, before reaching the suburbs, we 
found that the street, though a continuous one, changed its 
name just seven times. We had experienced something of the 
kind in our stroll about Glasgow, but in a different way. To 
reach a certain place good for shopping, we were to follow one 
street so far, and in our efforts to do so, after inquiring of two 
hundred and one people, we found that the erratic thing twisted 
around corners, whether at right angles or in a curve, in such 
utter disregard to all former experience of city thoroughfares, 
that we have not yet recovered from the effects of the discovery. 
Yesterday I chased a street entirely around a square in search 
of a gunmaker whose name had been given to me by a member 
of the Marooner Club at home. 

Three miles out we came to the ruins of Craigmillar Castle 
and dismounted to invade it. The old wooden door which 
closes the entrance was shut and locked, and some one appropri- 
ately suggested it was closed for repairs. I have a view of this 
castle, and if any one wants to see it when I get home I will ex- 
hibit it to him and act the guide by chattering from the local 
guide-book. As we stood there awaiting the arrival of the 
keeper, one lady looked listlessly about and then asked of some 

1 one near her, "what is peculiar about this place that we should 
be brought here?" We have an intelligent party but there are 
some odd persons connected with it, and I find their ideas and 

tf> talk often quite amusing. This morning a prominent lady de- 
clared her intention to spend the day at the hotel, but the con- 
ductor urged her to go with the party, telling her we should 
visit Edinboro Castle, Holyrood Palace, Parliament buildings, 
etc. She innocently remarked that she did not know there was 

^ anything at those places to see. But she went, and after we got 

• out upon the road she said to the conductor, "You see what an 
influence you had with me." History had none. Is there any 
use of such a person travelling in a country whose interest lies 
largely in the records of its past? 



TOUR THUOUGH EUROPE. 20. 

Craigmillar Castle, though most of the upper portion has 
tumbled in and the ivy has crept about it and hides many of the 
signs of decay, was more striking in its arrangement and the 
intricacies of its numerous passages, dungeons, stairways and 
the like, than any we had before seen. All that portion which 
lies under ground was as dark as night, yet by the aid of matches 
and holding on to each other's hands we explored perhaps the 
most of it, and I think I caught a cold in doing so, as I did an 
awful amount of sneezing at the dinner table. We could, with- 
out the aid of a guide, distinguish the banquet hall and the 
kitchen adjoining, with its great fire place eleven feet wide, all 
perfectly intact. With these in view, it was not hard to im- 
agine the roaring fires kept up here to roast the animals and con- 
sume the wood, which, perhaps, had sometingto do with cre- 
ating a fuel famine in this country. We went through what is 
shown as Queen Mary's bed-room — a little cuddy hole, seven by 
five ieet, especially short on light and ventilation. So, you 
see, the Queens in those days did not have very sumptuous 
apartments. If the Queen was a goodly sized lady and had 
much of a bed, I can't imagine what disposition she made of 
herself when not reclining. There was neither mantle or win- 
dow sill to sit upon, and no hooks in the wall from which to 
swing herself. I leave you to solve the difficulty. 

We returned by way of Duddingston and saw Duddingston 
Church, where the Scottish Chiefs were wont to go on Sunday. 
The stone tile upon which the lassies dismounted and mounted, 
was pointed out; and near the gate leading through the wall to 
the building, was the iron stock or collar, attached to the wall 
by a chain nearly eaten up with rust, where men who had of- 
fended were collared and kept there for a season while those 
entering at the gate were privileged to spit in the criminal's 
face, with no restriction as to chewers of tobacco. Jeanie 
Dean's cottage was pointed out to us, and very many other ob- 
jects of interest in this drive. 

At length we reached Holyrood Palace, the chief object of 
our drive, and here spent an hour or more in looking the build- 
ing over and taking an inventory of what is in sight. The 
original part of the palace is in ruins, but the more modern part 



3<J THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

is in good repair, and the greater part of it furnished for the use 
of the Queen of England, when she may choose to come over. 
That part was not open to visitors. We could not get even a 
peep through an opening in one of the blinds to see if modern 
Queen's live more luxuriously than those who passed off the 
stage before them. 

We were turned loose in one room 123 feet long by 46 wide, 
where hang the portraits of all the Queens and Kings of Scot- 
land. The guide mentioned their great value, when a lady 
present remarked they certainly could not be valued highly on 
account of their beauty. The most of them are very coarse 
looking fellows, and some of them look like a set of bloody 
butchers. Whether that be the fault of the painter or the 
physiognomy of the subjects, history does not record. We 
were shown some of the rough stone coffins in which notable 
personages had been buried, and they did not speak very highly 
of the skill of the workmen in stone of the day in which they 
were dug out. Then we went through Lord Darnley's rooms 
and saw his furniture and the tapestry, that if new would be a 
credit for this day and generation. The chairs in these rooms 
had two silken cords running from the back of the chair to the 
front part of the seat and crossing in the center. This was a 
modern arrangement, and was done to prevent pilgrims from 
dabbing down ir.to them and wearing them out. Our party 
never pass a noted chair but that we must sit in it and twist 
about a while and look foolish ; and I expect the parties having 
charge of this place had heard of our landing upon the shores of 
Scotland, and had been making preparations for us. I noticed 
many of the old articles of furniture had been chipped by relic 
hunters, and if not better protected, will be literally carried 
away. So far our own party has not been very bad in this re- 
spect. Dr. Tourjee caught one of them breaking a piece of 
stone at the Queen's lookout, in Stirling Castle, and gave him a 
lecturing over it, saying such things would compromise our 
entire party. 

We next went into Queen Mary's audience-room, her bed- 
chamber, and the dining-room. In the first was the bed, made 
up and all complete, used by royalty as far back as the 16th 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 3£ 

• 

century, and it did have an old look about it and no mistake. In 
the Queen's chamber was her own bed and much of the tapes- 
try of the room. Rizzio was killed in the dining-room, dragged 
out through her chamber to the farther side of the audience 
room and left there till the floor was stained with his blood. 
To shut it out the Queen engaged a carpenter and had him 
build a partition between the spots and the main part of the 
room. The guides tried to show us the spots, and we jammed 
each other about mightily to make room for the few straggling 
rays of light coming in there, but I don't believe I am fully sat- 
isfied I clearly saw any signs of blood. The guide was joked a 
good deol about it — was asked how often the spot was renewed, 
etc. . but he took it all in good part and was equal to the emer- 
gency. He was a very clever old fellow, and I think believed 
all that he said. In front of this old palace is the handsomest 
fountain in Scotland. 

From here we went to the house of John Knox and paraded 
and crowded about in the little box of a concern. A lady coming 
out was asked what was in there. She replied, ' 'nothing much 
but a musty smell." I am afraid the olfactories of some of our 
people are too good. Thence to the Parliament where Lords 
Currie, Hill and Churchill were holding Court in their respective 
rooms, and four distinguished looking fellows were sitting in a 
larger room as a Court of Appeals. Of course we went in. 
We go in every where they will let us and the dog don't look 
too vicious. I saw, for the first time, the gowns and curled and 
powdered wigs worn by all lawyers in attendance upon Courts 
in this country. I knew of this dress and had often seen pic- 
tures of it, but to see live men going about in such toggery ap- 
peared queer. 

From here we filed off and went to St. Giles Church, near by, 
whore Knox held forth in the 16th century. I forget the name 
of the present pastor. This, place had a more mouldy smell 
than any I had been in before. I presume the pastor dampens 
his handkerchief with cologne before going in to preach. We 
wound up the day with a visit to Edinboro Castle. I shall pass 
it briefly. It is in a good state of preservation, the decayed 
portions having been restored. A regiment of soldiers is sta- 



32 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

tioned within it and two or three batteries of very old guns 
overlook its ramparts. One of these guns is fired by electricity 
at noon every day, Greenwich time. Here is a cannon made 
in i486, and bursted in 1680. Around it lie some of its old 
stone bullets. Its calibre is about fifteen inches or more. If it 
bursted in 1680 I imagine it was the first and only time it was 
ever fired. 1'he degree of its strength was amazingly low. The 
old crown jewels of Scotland are kept here in a large glass case, 
and that protected by a strong iron cage. Close by sits the 
chest in which they were discovered after being missing so long. 
From this castle one has a most splendid view of Edinburg and 
its environs. I forgot to mention that we were shown, also, 
the Heart of Mid Lothian. It is near St. Giles Church, Parlia- 
ment Buildings, and the Tolbooth ; and the spot is marked by 
granite stones of different hues set into the pavement in the 
form of a heart. 

To-night, at 9, we are to take our departure from Scotland. 
I can not close without saying again how delightful our stay here 
has been. So much has been crowded into so short a space I 
find it impossible to realize that it has been less than four days 
t since we landed from the ship. I like these Scottish people 
and I have no doubt they like to have us among them. They 
are always polite and cheerfully give you all the information 
they can. I don't think they appreciate their poets as much as 
American's do. One morning two of us were hunting the 
house in which Waiter Scott had lived. In the neighborhood 
of the place we were directed to go, we asked an intelligent and 
well dressed man if Scott ever lived there. He seemed puz- 
zled ; said he didn't know, then studied a moment as though 
communing with himself, and asked: ''Who did you say, sir?" 
Upon our again mentioning the name of Scott, he looked at us 
inquiringly, and then said: "Oh, Scott, I thought you said 
Lord Brougham's; yes, sir, perhaps that is the house, " and 
then walked on. The vendors ot wares in the basement could 
not even tell us where the house was, and I doubt if they knew. 
The memory of the great poet don't keep them awake of nights. 
But we found the house. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 33 



LETTER V. 



Edinburg to London— Twilight in Scotland— Kenilworth Castle— Breakfast under a 
Shed — Visit to the home of Shakspeare — Lunch at the Old Red Horse— The 
ravages of Relic Hunters — At Inns of Court Hotel, London---Sabbath in the 
great City — Spurgeon.- 

London, England, July 13, 1879, 

On Friday night, at 9 o'clock, we left Edinburg by special 
train, the entire party being together and filling just twenty 
'cars drawn by two locomotives. At the hotel, as we began to $ 
file out and enter the long line of vehicles in waiting to carry us 
to the depot, the citizens began to gather to see the large array 
of Americans, until the throng became so immense in the 
broad street that it required great activity on the part of the * 
policemen to keep the walks clear for pedestrians, and to allow 
us to get away. And as our train whirled through the country 
with the placards "engaged" posted on the car windows, people 
would look in wonder until we had gone out of sight. You 
may be troubling your minds as to how the placards could be 
read at that time at night. At first this was something I could not at 
once get used to, but on the brighter days in Scotland it did not 
get what we called dark at home till after 1 1 o'clock, and at no 
time during the night so dark as it does in America. The eve- 
ning we left Edinburg I read a newspaper in the cars by the 
light of the heavens after ten o'clock, and was able to resume 

the next morning, without the aid of other light, as early as 
5 



34 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

three o'clock ; and my organs of vision are not first class at that. 
We ran all night and were tolerably comfortable in the first 
class carriages where four rode together. The train reached 
Kenilworth at six o'clock in the morning and remained till 9:50. 
From the depot we walked or rode, as we chose, to Kelinworth 
Castle, distant about a mile, over a pleasant drive, and took 
breakfast at a hotel near by, where the most excellent, nicely 
cooked beef and mutton, and other good things, were served 
in bounteous quantities under a long shed arranged for the spe- 
cial occasion. After breakfast we "did" the Castle, but I will 
attempt no description of it, as I have been into that line so 
much already since coming here, I am inclined to let them alone. 
Nearly all of this Castle is in ruins, only that part being pre- 
served where two or three rooms are filled with relics, all of 
which are duly inventoried and entered into more than a hun- 
dred note books. I generally buy a guide book of these noted 
places, check off the articles as I see them, and stuff the book in 
my pocket. What I am to do with this accumulation of bag- 
gage is beginning to be a serious question with me. Besides 
their cost, which is the smaller item, they are likely to overload 
my trunk, Kelinworth Castle is made famous by Scott's novel 
of that name, and during the season of tourists, thousands flock 
there. No castle, so far, has interested me as much as Craig- 
millar, near Edinburg. I may say, however, that of all the 
castles I have seen Kelinworth was the only one in which Queen 
Mary had not had an abode at some time or another. That 
Queen Mary, if you take for true all that is said as to where she 
kept herself, had rather a roving disposition there can scarcely be 
a doubt. And when I think again of the cramped-up room at 
Craigmillar used by her as bed chamber, I fancy she must have 
made her stay short there. 

From Kelinworth we proceeded to Stratford-on-Avon, our 
train having to go upon two other roads for the trip. Here we 
stayed from 11:50 a. m. to 3 p. m. lunching under the auspices 
of the Old Red Horse Inn, but in a Bowling Alley about a 
square behind the Inn and back of the court through which we 
passed to reach it. The people at this Inn attach much import- 
ance to the visit there of Washington Irving, and the room he 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 35 

occupied during his stay, now used as a reception room, con- 
tains his picture, copies of some of his works, the chair he sat 
in and other mementoes of the man. Shakspeare doubtless had 
many a spree in this old tavern. 

Of all the funny loking places we had seen, Stratford-on-Avon 
beat the list. Aside from the fact that it was the home of 
Shakspeare, it is well worth a visit by those who happen in this 
part of the country. I saw an old thatched building called the 
i "Thatch Inn," that struck me as so very peculiar I hunted all 
over the place for a picture of it, without success. I believe I 
would rather have had it than one of the poet's house. But 
the inside of the poet's old home is more fantastic than the out- 
side appearance, though most of the rooms are much larger 
than those of other dwelling houses of that time. 

Again I saw evidences of the vandals who had been here be- 
fore us. Much of the woodwork had been chipped by the 
knives of relic-hunters. I despise them, and I think I would 
stay over a day to testify against one if there was a law for pun- g 
ishing them. I honestly believe, if unmolested, they would car- 
ry away the Savior's tomb if He was corporeal and His body 
rested beneath. In the room called the museum are very many 
of the relics of Shakspeare ; articles of furniture, drinking ves- 
sels, manuscripts and originals of the first printed editions of 
some of his plays, covering quite a variety. The original of a 
portrait taken of him at 35, and said to be the best one ever paint- 
ed, occupies a fire-proof safe, high up at one end of the room, 
which at first look appears set in the wall. This safe is closed 
and locked every night. In many places the falling timbers of 
this house, which has an interest to people over so large a part 
of the world, is strengthened by the addition of iron in such a 
manner as not to change at all the original appearance. I ex- 
pect one of these days they will have to surround the entire 
building with a strong case, then put a regiment of honest sol- 
diers to guard it. I think relic hunters could get away with it 
more quickly than it would go through natural decay. 

After leaving Stratford-on-Avon our train brought us directly 
here, flying through the country, and by elegant stations on the 
way with the highest speed, stopping at only two or three sta- 



36 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

tions en route, and arriving at the London station at 6:50 p. m., 
after a most enjoyable day for us. A few miles back we drop- 
ped the four cars containing section IV, that they might come 
in on another track and stop at a different hotel. Vehicles were 
in waiting to carry us to Inns of Court Hotel, where again we 
found our rooms already assigned, and our luggage (they don't 
call it baggage here) in them and unstrapped. We have had a 
very easy time about our luggage and all kinds of transportation. 
I must write one letter about it. I think that would interest as 
much as anything else. We began dinner at 8:30 p. m. and got 
away from the table at 9:30. I would have been in bed before 
that hour at home. 

To-day, after breakfasting at 9, most of the party attended 
some church. I went to the tabernacle where Spurgeon holds 
forth, and on reaching there found a stream pouring into it. 
Every one except members and Americans were then being re- 
fused tickets. "American" was our password and it passed us 
in. The building very much resembles a theater with three 
tiers, except that the upper two run all the way around the 
house, while at the lower one, where a stage would be, runs out 
a platform for the choir, and above this, not extending so far 
out, is another platform which serves as a pulpit. A plain rail- 
ing runs around both of these, the pulpit being a plain table be- 
hind which sat a sofa, and to the right of the speaker a chair, 
constituting all the furniture in sight. There is no ornamenta- 
tion about the building. Its seating capacity is near 7,000. I 
was fearful the great man was not to preach that day as he has 
been sick lately and has failed two or three times to put in an 
appearance. On entering I asked a member about it, and was 
told I would hear Spurgeon. Well, I did hear him, and I would 
not have missed doing so for a great deal. He read a long les- 
son, and made such extended remarks upon it that when he 
went to give out the second hymn, which was sung, and prayed 
his second time, I felt sorry he was through. But just then he 
announced his text, mentioned his sub-divisions and launched 
out, no doubt to the delight of every man, woman and child in 
the congregation. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 37 

I gathered that the Archbishop of Canterbury had requested 
that to-day be set apart as a day of prayer for the cessation of 
the long" and damaging spell of wet weather they have been ex- 
periencing in the country. The Rev. gentleman spoke of the 
hardness of the times, and charged it upon the Government. 
He criticised their action in unmeasured terms, and especially 
that part which brought so many wars upon their hands. He 
asserted that they invaded domains they had no right to, and 
that Great Britain, in that respect, was no better than a thief or 
a robber, using those very words. He believed in prayer, but 
thought this would not result in good because the Nation would 
not acknowledge their errors. After excoriation upon excoria- 
tion he wound up that, head of his subject by saying in sub- 
stance : "I have expressed my belief upon this matter and you 
can make the most of it, It was on my conscience and I was 
compelled to get rid of it. " Alluding once to America he spoke of 
her people as being leaders in enlightenment and religion. The 
two members whose pew two of us occupied seemed anxious to 
know how we liked their minister, and were delighted when 
told that Mr. Spurgeon had thousands of admirers in America. * 

A big programme is out for us to-morrow, and I will close and 
take a rest for it. 



38 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 



LETTER VI. 



A day in London— Drive through the great city and the sights we saw— House ol' 
Lords and House of Commons— A British Court— Impressious— Leaving Lon- 
don Crossing the North Seas-Arrival at Rotterdam — Best breakfast we met 
in Europe— Cart loads of strawberries devoured for breakfast — Description ol 
the boats, warehouses, rnilkwagons, women and dogs— The primitive ways— 
i ileanliness of the Hollanders— Peculiar customs— A tour about the city- 
Trip to The Hague -The Hotel— Glad to get out of Holland. 

Rotterdam, Holland, July 15, 1879. 

My last letter was written at London, on Sunday night. 
The next morning at nine we took vehicles and drove through 
parts of the city. It was a little foggy — they have fogs in Lon- 
don now and then — and we had one or two showers, but the 
things to be seen were of such unbroken interest to us that we 
did not mind these much. Most of the party, ladies and gen- 
tlemen, are provided with rubber cloaks and hoods, and with 
these not much attention is paid to rain. As we are to return 
to this immense city at the close of our tour and stay three days, 
I will merely mention an outline of the drive. We passed 
Lincoln's Inn Hall and Library, the Law Courts, Temple Bar, 
office of the New York Herald, Cook's Tourists offices, Ludgate 
Circus and Hill, St. Paul's, telegraph office, postoffice, Peel's 
statue, through Newgate, past the statue of Prince Consort, up 
Holborn and High Hill, via Holborn Bars, by the British Mu- 
seum, through Oxford street, which is lined with retail stores, 
Regent street, where many fashionable residences are, along 
Haymarket and by the theatre of that name, to the National 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 39 

Gallery, along Pall Mall (Pell Mell they pronounce it,) past the 
War Buildings, and the magnificent Club Houses, Prince of 
Wales' house, through St. James street and by the Parks, past 
Buckingham Palace, stables and garden, out Grosvenor street 
and along Rotten Row, the new Museum of Natural History, 
and that of South Kensington, by the Albert Memorial, the 
Home and Foreign offices, through Stand Street to Westmin- 
ster Abbey and Westminster Hall. 

We went hurriedly through the Museums and were dazed 
with the vast array of relics and curiosities there. We saw the 
pictures in the National Gallery something like one sees a 
country as he speeds through it in a railroad car, save that once, 
in a while, when we saw something particularly attractive, we 
could check up and give it a moment's more time. I would 
take it that either the British Museum or South Kensington (the 
latter of which I liked best) would afford a person of even or- 
dinary capacity for appreciating such things, pleasure for a week 
or more. At St. Paul's and Westminster we groped about 
among the lower passages and over the tombs and by the Crypts 
of many a person famous in this and our own country. The 
Poet's Corner, in Westminster, seemed to possess more attrac- 
tion for us than the more gaudy and elaborate tombs in honor 
of the royalty and nobility. I am sure I was far more interest- 
ed in the simple tablet covering the remains of Dickens, than 
I was in that of any King or Queen whose life was commemora- 
ted by a monument there. Of course we jammed into the 
House of Lords and the House of Commons, in the former of 
which the Court of Lords was in session and the trial of a case 
was in progress. I must confess that I was not struck dumb 
with the appearance of the eight or ten men I saw here; and 
the noble Lord who had the floor while we were in, impressed 
me as very tiresome. If it had been at night I should have be- 
gun to yawn and gape at once. At the South Kensington Mu- 
seum, they register visitors as was done at our Centennial. In 
1862 the number of visitors was 1,241,369, the next highest 
being in 1S76, when it reached 1,173,350. 

We returned to the hotel at 4:30 and took an early dinner. 
At 8 the second section numbering seventy-four, including the 



40 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

two conductors, left the hotel and taking the cars reached Har- 
wich, the end of British territory, at 10 o'clock that night, where 
we were transferred to a brand new steamer, comfortably stowed 
away, even though as many as six were put in one room — the 
rooms containing that many berths — and transported across the 
North Sea to this place, reaching the wharf at 9:30 A. m. Here 
we fell in with new scenery and certainly a very different kind 
of people. I presume all of Holland is flat and much of it 
"made" land. They have a time of it keeping the channel 
open through the river Maas, which leads to the sea, as that 
stream is lined with dredging machines busy at work filling with 
mud the barges which lie alongside of them. The shores are 
fiat and in most cases covered with a species of flag which is 
used for thatching houses, and which was being cut and tied 
in bundles and loaded into the small sailing vessels in various 
places. 

As far as the eye could reach, on either hand, we could see 
the great clumsy windmills as their arms lazily revolved against 
the horizon. This was a clear day — the first we had seen since 
leaving New York — and we could see a long distance. The 
examination of our baggage was very hasty and formal, many 
of the smaller packages not being opened at all. They do not 
suspect tourists of coming here as a matter of speculation. The 
vessels of these Hollanders are very heavy, unshapely things — 
a sort of enlargement of their ungraceful wooden shoes. Their 
yawls or skiffs are worse, even, than their sailers, and they sit 
right near the bow and row with a pair of oars which very much 
resemble a big fence rail, straightened and flattened a bit at the 
end which dips heavily into the water. These skiffs, I would 
guess, propel about as easily as a water-soaked log. On arrival 
at the wharf we were driven to the Victoria Hotel, where we 
found the best breakfast awaiting us we have had in Europe, 
making due allowance for sharpened appetites by fasting since 
the evening before. Napkins were on the table large enough 
for two of them to make a sheet for a narrow bed, and they and 
the table cloths were of such spotless whiteness that we all felt 
sorry we could not stop here long enough to have some wash- 
ing done. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 4 1 

Just about the time we were through with our meal, some 
one came in with a little stone jar, resembling a small flower 
pot, filled with the biggest and most luscious strawberries I 
ever saw in any country, and upon announcing that there was a 
cart at the door loaded with them, and for sale at only two cents 
a pot full, there was a stampede out there. The supply was not 
exhausted, for before one cart could be emptied another would 
heave in sight, until we could eat no more. I never saw and 
never expect to see again so large a quantity of this delicious 
berry disappear in so short a time. Directly after this, on 
starting out to take a stroll, three women signaled me to buy 
some berries. Placing my hand in the region of my stomach 
I moved it up to my throat and made a mark there, indicating 
how full I was, at which the women laughed heartily. 

Things are primitive here in many respects. The larger busi- 
ness houses, fronting on the numerous canals, lower their freight 
from the upper stories by a single rope running over a pulley 
from above and around a check-post to regulate the speed of 
descent. I saw no block and tackle, and presume they hoist by 
main strength and awkwardness. The women wash the clothes 
on the sidewalk, and use a species of pestle like an old-fashion- 
ed "hominy beater," and scrub the pieces with the wash brush 
that we use for cleaning wood-work, by laying the article 
against the inside of the tub. They pound away with little re- 
gard to passers-by, who, if they don't want a little soap suds fly 
upon them, must take the middle of the street. 

All transportation, or nearly all, of goods, wares and merch- 
andise, except the heavy articles, is done on long trucks with a 
pair of wheels near the centre ; on wheelbarrows, and the shoul- 
ders of women by means of the neck yoke resting on the back 
and shoulders, and into a depression of which fits the neck. 
The trucks are propelled by men, women or dogs, and now and 
then by all three combined. It was the first time in my life I 
had seen dogs used in this way except for the amusement of 
children in harnessing them up to little wagons. I saw one 
heavily loaded truck with a woman in front pulling, a boy and 
girl behind pushing, and two dogs harnessed and hitched in 
underneath, one of which was setting to with all his might, while 
6 



42 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

the other was shirking, just as other people do on rare occa- 
sions. The milk wagon is nothing more or less than a woman 
with one of these yokes with a keg attached to each end, having 
a sliding cover which is removed when they deliver milk. I saw 
several of these and was trying to guess what they were. At 
last one put down her load in front of a residence, rang the door 
bell, and waited for the opening of the door, while I leaned 
against a tree near the canal to witness the result. The measure 
hung inside the keg, while two earthen pitchers were attached 
to each, outside. What these were for I have not yet found 
out. I may do so before leaving Holland. The sidewalks are 
narrow, and as these women go swinging along with baskets or 
kegs, one has to keep a good look out or he stands a chance of 
getting his shins rubbed. 

I never saw a more cleanly people than these Hollanders 
here in Rotterdam. The children, especially, looked as 
though it were Sunday and they had just been tumbled out of a 
band-box. Even the workmen and lower classes were all clean. 
I think I didn't see a dirty man, woman or child about the city 
except, perhaps, a few on board some of the lubberly 
vessls at the wharf. The women are generally good looking, 
not handsome, and every one seemed cheerful. I saw very 
few unattractive faces amongst them, and not a single beggar. 
After parading about the city independently for an hour in 
squads of two, three or a dozen, we were placed in fifteen car- 
riages, similar to your nicer two horse hacks, and had a two or 
three hour's drive over the city. I guess tourists don't come to 
Rotterdam much, for even in our little walk we were known as 
foreigners and gazed at, but as our caravan went whirling 
through the streets we kicked up a racket the like of which I 
never saw where only common people were riding through a 
town. Men, women and children flocked to the doors and 
windows to look at us, and pedestrians would stop and watch 
us till we were out of sight. In passing an intersecting street 
our line of carriages would block it up, and before the rear had 
passed, we had a crowd of curious spectators on either side 
reaching often a square away. The better to see I sat on the 
roof of the carriage behind the driver, and in my efforts to re- 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 43 

tain my seat, see all the sights, and enter a memorandum once 
in a while, I had a busy time of it. We hauled up once and 
dismounted at a church, when the crowd became immense. 
Just before resuming the march, the women got so thick and 
pressed so closely around a carriage occupied by four young 
ladies that they were compelled to close the window. At this 
carriage one woman looked admiringly at its occupants and said, 
"Oh how beautiful you all are." Two of the ladies understood 
her. I hadn't thought before that we were burdened with 
beauty and I am skeptical on that point yet. But tastes will 
differ. 

There is one thing here which I think would take an Ameri- 
can a long time to get used to, and that is the use, in very pub- 
lic places, of the entirely exposed urinals. They have them for 
men in nearly every nook and corner outside of the church 
where we stopped, right upon the narrow side walk, and ap- 
proach them in about the same spirit, but with somewhat less 
concern than one of our ladies would stop to adjust a disarranged 
shoe. At the depot women had charge of these places, and one 
stood at the door directing our gentlemen who couldn't deci- 
pher the Holland lingo, the way to go. 

At 3 o'clock we wound up our ride at the magnificent depot 
just at the edge of the city, where we took the cars for the 
Hague, arriving there in half an hour and passing the town of 
Scheidam on the way, a name familiar to Americans from the 
few bottles of Schnapps drank in that country. We have seen 
no fences in Holland, and are told we will see none. The little 
narrow fields away back from the railroad remind one some of 
the plantations on the sugar coast in Louisiana, with the excep- 
tion that they are much smaller and are separated by small 
canals or ditches apparently about four feet wide. At crossings 
there are bridges and gates. I presume they don't do it, but it 
looks to me as if the stock could easily jump these ditches. 

No hotel at The Hague could bed away all of our party, so 
the ladies and married couples quartered at the Hotel Belle 
Vue, and the others came over here. I don't know the name 
of the hotel, but it's all right. We are experiencing much 
trouble and deriving a great deal of amusement over our inabil- 



44 



THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 



ity to speak the language, while the money confuses us beyond 
calculation. In my stroll around the city this afternoon, I made 
a purchase and handed the woman a sixpence left over from the 
English supply. She looked at it inquiringly and muttered 
something that was all Hottentot to me, but did not take the 

t hing. Drawing out my entire stock in trade, including both 
English and American pieces of silver and copper and one 
small coin of her own outlandish stuff, worth about fcur cents, 

h er face brightened up and she. took the little fellow and gave 
me back four pieces of copper. I am glad I am going to get 
out of Holland soon. 




TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 45 



LETTER VII. 



Talk about The Hague— A woman pulling a Uanalboat — The stores— The Picture 
Galleries — Departure for Haarlem to attend a Concert — A Dutch Wedding- 
Arrival at Amsterdam and the doings there— Trouble over Table de Hole— 
Holland an entertaining place to visit. 

Amsterdam, Holland, July 16, 1879. 

In Glasgow, Scotland, I saw a man working in the shafts of a 
cart well laden with coal, while a woman was pushing, but it was 
reserved for us to see, at The Hague, the seat of the Govern- 
ment and the home of royalty, a woman acting horse and pull- 
ing a good sized canal boat, while a man sat lazily in the stern 
of the vessel steering. This sight rather shocked the feelings 
of our party. Some one, in mitigation of this apparent injus- 
tice, suggested that perhaps the man and woman took turn 
about, and ail of us felt sorry it happened to be the woman's 
watch just at that time. All the other boats we had seen were 
towed by men who got down and "scratched gravel" like any 
other horse. Horse flesh must be scarce or human flesh super- 
abundant in Holland, 

I got up early this morning and sauntered through the streets 
of the Hague. People don't seem to be early risers there 
Very few pedestrians were astir, not even the tipler out for his 
early horn. I saw a few men around trucks laden with peat, 
and now and then a. servant girl who had been over to a neigh- 
bor to borrow some matches to start the breakfast fire. The city 



46 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

was very quiet. It is well that so much of the transportation is 
done by other mofles than on wagons. The noise would be 
deafening. I now understand why so many of the doors to 
stores are kept closed in Glasgow and Edinburg. If they did 
not do it they would have to keep a supply of speaking trump- 
ets and ear trumpets, too, in order to carry on necessary con- 
versation. Here, in the smaller stores, the. entrance is by one 
small door into a hall and then into the shop. Often both of 
these are closed and the only evidence there is that articles are 
for sale within is that given by the little show window attached 
to the front of the house. Sometimes one has to look around 
and take the bearings a good while before he is sure of the right 
door, and when he finds it, has to ring the owner up from an un- 
known quarter of the house. 

In front of very many of the windows, and especially the front 
ones of residences, are two looking glasses fastened by iron 
arms holding frames at an angle so that one within may sit back 
and see those moving along the street, while in others are wire- 
netting, enabling the occupants of the room to stand at the 
window and see out and not be recognized. While meander- 
ing about this morning I saw a rnilk-maid milking one of the 
little asses of this country, three others standing patiently by 
having already been milked or waiting their turn. A moment 
or two later I saw the driver taking some away that had been 
milked. At breakfast one of our boys said there were four 
kinds of milk in Holland; cow's milk, ass's milk, goat's milk 
and sour milk, and that he had tried them all but the latter. 
That young man has an inquiring turn of mind. He and I had 
some letters to mail, and it would have done you good to see us 
wrestling with the landlord for stamps and settling with him 
after we got them. The efforts of some of our folks to talk the 
language of these people causes both amusement and conster- 
ration.. I never attempt it. There are many who can read the 
language, but I find them but little better off than those who 
know nothing about it. 

After an early breakfast we did the city in a body, on foot, 
passing the Government buildings and going through the two 
picture galleries of the place, in which we saw many pictures, 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 47 

the work of artists famous in this and our own country. There 
was one large painting that particularly attracted our attention. 
We had heard of it before reaching here, but it required no 
eulogies to arouse our admiration. It had been spoken of as 
"Potter's Bull," and was painted by Julius Potter in 1649, w h° 
died at the age of 29. Though known as the "Bull" there are 
four other prominent characters in the foreground, a cow and 
her calf, a sheep, and a man who stands leaning against a tree, 
under which they are resting, with an air of satisfaction on his 
face. One could almost imagine he saw these animals breathe ; 
and it would have hardly surprised any one if the frog near by 
had hopped off the canvas into the middle of the room. This 
young genius painted another picture — representing a pack of 
dogs in conflict with a bear, the hunter witnessing the struggle ; 
and the thing appeared so terribly real that it was impossible 
not to have a feeling of pity for the poor dogs that were being 
lascerated and killed by the infuriated beast that fought for life. 
It is impossible to tell what round of fame that mere youth 
would have reached if he had lived to the age of fifty or more. 

I am sorry for the credit of my associates in this tour to say 
that they often turn from the paintings of such masters as Ru- 
bens, Rembrandt and others, and gaze with a species of rever- 
ential awe upon the works of some obscure fellow unknown to 
fame. As for myself, I must confess, early, an ignorance as to 
what fine paintings are. Every once in a while some member 
of the party will come up and say, "Oh, have you seen that fine 
painting in 'the other room by Mr. so and so?" naming some 
noted painter, and upon my replying in the negative, dragging 
me off to see a work I had already passed without being attract- 
ed, and which, at last, only became a matter of interest because 
it was the product of so and so. Great men differ, as a matter 
of course, but my judgment of a picture is based upon the effect 
it has upon me before the painter is known. I can't admire all 
the works of these great men, though I have marched about 
them, taken sundry positions before them for the best light and 
shade, and kept my mind on the dead author all the time. I 
am afraid the "little one" is worse than I am, and I have ap- 
prehensions that she, even, has grown too old to learn to go 



48 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

into ecstacies over all the paintings of the old authors. Some 
of our people, I suspect, never commit themselves with refer- 
ence to a picture till they delve out the name of the painter, and 
then, if he be a big bug, cry out, "how beautiful, " "such life- 
like expressions," "how delicate its shading;" and so on. For 
my own part, I never carry a catalogue into a picture gallery. 
I do not care for pictures which of themselves do not fix my 
attention without the influence of some great name ; and when 
I do find one which does — and so far they have been pretty nu- 
merous — there are always those around me ready to give the 
information, as many of them spend half their time in a gallery 
reading their catalogues. But there is danger, anyway, of this 
picture business becoming a greater nuisance than that of the 
castles, and the time may come, before the journey is over, that 
I will lag behind the doors of their galleries. I would vastly 
rather see their people and their ways and their shops and the 
things they contain, than a big gallery it would take a week to 
see satisfactorily. 

We passed the open square where some tall gun was exe- 
cuted, and on being shown the spot about where the deed was 
done, some sentimental chap feelingly remarked that perhaps 
his spirit now howered over the place. "Let it hover," was 
answed by one not so deeply impressed. The fact is some of 
us are crude material, and don't work up just as kindly as we 
ought. 

At 10:50 we took the train for this place, and on arrival at 
Haarlem our cars were run upon a side track, and we were allowed 
to march up town, astonish the Dutch, and attend a special con- 
cert given in the Cathedral, on "the world-lamous organ which 
enjoys the proud distinction of having been played by Han- 
del, and by Mozart, when he was only ten years old." That is 
a quotation from our own little guide book. I am sorry to say 
I had not heard of the organ before starting on this trip. Be- 
fore leaving the cars, programmes of the pieces to be played 
were distributed by the conductor, but on reaching the Cathe- 
dral we found a marriage ceremony just beginning and we had 
to remain as spectators. The ceremony was a long one, in 
Dutch, and unimpressive, and the groom didn't seem to care a 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 49 

row of pins whether school kept or not. Both he and the bride 
mustered out of the building just as man and wife might at the 
close of a sermon. Some of our ladies who are good at nosing 
out things, ascertained that the groom was a widower with two 
children and that the bride had been a servant in his family. 
That being the case the Americans were satisfied. On account 
of the delay caused by the wedding, the grand old organ, con- 
structed by Muller, over a hundred years ago, omitted two of 
the eight pieces. The music was charming. 1 heard two pieces 
and then slipped out and crept about over the town till time to 
return to the depot and meet the party coming just as our cars 
were being run in to hook on the regular train for this place, 
which was reached at two o'clock, our gang stopping at the 
Hotel des Pays Bas, a house so odd in the arrangement and 
construction of its rooms that nearly half an hour was spent in 
visiting each other's quarters to see how all were located. Ev- 
ery one was pleased. 

Having gotten through with this we went in a body to the 
Royal Museum, the finest picture gallery in Holland, and there 
stayed till we saw it out. For once we took our time, having 
nothing else to do before dinner, which had been announced 
for six o'clock. At dinner every one was hungry, there having 
been no opportunity for lunch. Americans who have not been 
over here will never understand till they experience it how te- 
dious one of their dinners here is to a real hungry man. I will 
give the experience to-day. Down we sit on each side of a great 
long table, and wait till all hands are adjusted and the four feet 
square napkins are satisfactorily arranged. Then the soup is 
served. That being done, all around the soup dishes are re 
moved and plates given you instead ; then come along big dishes 
of fish and potatoes from which you help yourself, after eating 
which all plates are again changed. The bill of fare being in 
Holland lingo, our chief difficulty lay in our not knowing what 
would follow, and consequently in being unable to gauge our- 
selves properly for it. The danger on one hand was that if we 
did not partake pretty freely of the courses as they came along, 
others might not succeed them, and we would come out short ; 
while on the other hand, we ran the risk of filling up before 
7 



50 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

reaching the end and getting among the goodies. To-dav there 
were just eight courses, the plates being removed each time, 
and as the table was unusually full and waiters few, the process 
was very slow. Bread and butter were alwa3's in reach, and 
the temptation to nibble at these was too great to be resisted. 
The upshot of it was that I fell at the fifth course, after a seige 
of over an hour, with oceans of the most luscious cherries and 
strawberries in the back-ground. I think another day I will get 
in with the steward and borrow a bill of fare and cipher it out 
before dinner comes on. But it is well these dinners are long, 
as it is the only time during the day we get a genuine good 
rest. It is a splendid place to rest when we are not hungry, 
but rather annoying when our appetites are sharp. Whenever 
a member refuses an article constituting one course he has to 
sit it out and wait till that one is disposed of by all, and the next 
one comes around. Often I use this time by writing up my 
notes or continuing my letters, which are generally written in 
detachments. 

Amsterdam contains near 300,000 inhabitants, and is said to 
be built entirely upon piles. One would not guess the character 
of the foundation from any evidences he sees; still, in some of 
the streets, I saw houses very much out of plumb, and leaning 
out into the street as if endeavoring to kiss their neighbors 
across the way. All of Holland is twenty-four to thirty feet be- 
low the level of the sea, and on that account I suspect they 
don't dig their cellars very deep. There is a way of cleaning 
out the numerous canals which one is liable to tumble into any 
moment if he don't keep his eyes open, and I understand it is 
done once a year, but I have avoided undertaking to become ac- 
quainted with the process for fear the effort and the information 
combined would incapacitate me from pursuing the tour. In 
some parts of the city the streets and sidewalks are so narrow- 
that we could touch the houses with our umbrellas from the 
tops of the omnibusses as we drove from the depot to the hotel. 

In the morning we are to make an early visit to the Palace 
and one or two old churches, and leave for Cologne at 10:40, 
which will give us the longest ride we have had in the cars since 
leaving Edinburg. We have been carried away with Holland, 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 5 I 

and have been nearly as great a show to the people as they 
have been to us. It seems to me that those* who omit this 
quaint land in a tour in Europe make a mistake. No one could 
possibly regret a visit here. He will probably not see a beggar 
in all Holland, or a single person whose appearance would in- 
dicate they stood in need of alms. I have seen none and I 
have tried hard to see all there is to be seen. 

To day has been a cloudy and a very cool day. and my room- 
mate has gone to bed clear under all the cover with his heavy 
overcoat across the lower part of his body. So we have not 
suffered with heat in Holland. 



<£&§&- 






u ;. J - >-- 



yy; - 



5 2 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 



LETTER VIII. 



The King's Palace at Amsterdam— Scenery on the German Border— Dutch "Dams" 
—Clean Cities— Cologne and its Cathedral ; a Costly 8hrine ; Big Bells— The 
Church of St. Ursula -Ancient Relics, and sacred Bones— "Over the Rhine"— 
The River of Magnificent Scenery— Bingen— Fran kfort-on-the-Main— AViesba- 
den and its Sycamore Avenues. 

Heidelberg, Germany, July 19, 1879. 

On the morning of the 17th, we visited the Palace, in Am- 
sterdam, where the King spends eight days in the year, and had 
our first glimpse of the inside of the dwelling of live royalty. 
Over in Scotland we were looking up the abodes of dead Kings 
and Queens, the small remnants of whose furniture were in such 
dilapidation it was difficult for us to determine its original com- 
position. Here, everything was new and in order as you would 
find it in a well kept house. We were first shown the small 
dining room, and wondered what must be the dimensions of the 
big one. I don't know how long we were marching around in 
that place, gaping at the finery, but it appeared to me even 
the King of this small territory did not suffer for the want of 
elbow room. Most of the rooms, walls and all, are solid, high- 
ly polished marble, and where not were of silk tapestry of the 
most taking patterns. The ball-room is a very gorgeous room, 
and the old Dutch guide, who was dressed as if a ball were 
soon to come off and he to be one of the Queen's partners, de- 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 53 

clared it to be the finest in Europe. It is 120 feet long, 
60 feet wide, 100 feet high, solid marble, and not a column any- 
where to be seen. Of course dancers would not likely bump 
their heads against the rafters should they jump ever so high. 
After this we went to the church and the Exchange, when we 
were driven through a maze of streets and canals, to the depot, 
where, at 10:40 a. in. , we took the train for Cologne. The day 
was clear and warm, and we had pecks of dirt flying in at our 
car windows. Directly after leaving we ran into the grain pro- 
ducing lands, the fertility of which apparently increased till we 
reached the Rhine, at Cologne. 

There was abundant evidence of the spirit of war in the forts 
we passed on the border and the numerous soldiers seen every- 
where. Among other places we passed through Zevenaar, 
Gelden, Kempen, Utrecht, Arnheim, Crefeld, Oppum and Ne- 
uss. Just alter leaving Zevenaar we came to the station on the 
border where our baggage went through the mill again. It was 
hastily done. They caught my roommate on a box of cigars, 
partly full, and made him pay 12 cents duty only. In Germany, 
after crossing a branch of the Rhine, which we did in boats pro- 
pelled along by wire ropes stretched across the stream, the 
scenery became absolutely enchanting and was sufficient to keep 
awake and interest our worn out and sleepy crowd. I saw no 
stock or fruit, but as far as the eye could reach the landscape 
was covered with luxuriant grain, relieved by the variation in 
colors and the magnificent roads which run through avenues of 
trees that had an inviting look to us. The lands must be very 
rich in the first part of Germany. In a few of the fields where 
the wheat had just been cut and bound, it looked as if the 
bundles nearly covered the ground. There was no waste ter- 
ritory, and not a poor spot to be seen. 

We saw so many dams in Holland that I fear some of our 
party contracted bad habits in the use of language. The word 
"dam" seemed to work itself into everything about the place, 
and especially on the street cars. Nearly every one was re- 
minded of a story. Very often people who do not swear like 
to repeat a story having a few cuss words in it. It is a species 
of forbidden fruit that tastes sweet to them. In this connection 



54 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 

Rotterdam was illustrated. A girl had eaten the little boy's 
candy up, and upon his paternal ancestor telling him it was no 
harm to repeat the name of the city mentioned, he remarked 
he hoped it would "Rotterdam teeth out." And in this way 
he flanked all responsibility for profanity. They have the most 
awful names; or a combination of names in Holland. The signs 
were a continual puzzle to us. It is probable that many of the 
names on the signs were composed of two or three words, but 
the latters of the same size and shape on each were strung to- 
gether and appeared as one, Here is one of the easiest and 
shortest taken at Haarlem with forty urchins watching me as I 
spelled it off and wrote it down in my note book — Steenkolen- 
veringing. I was afraid to tackle those having three vowels in 
succession, sometimes twice in the same word. I wonder the 
jaws of the Hollanders are not twisted out of all shape. 

In Amsterdam the chimes of a church near our hotel gave us 
the section of a tune every quarter of an hour, and at the end 
of the hour turned out a long song — not loud and harsh but soft 
and agreeable to the ear. The garbage of that city is gathered 
up at 8 o'clock in the morning. The driver stops his big box 
of a wagon and goes along the street, whirling a watchman's 
rattle about the size of a small cupboard, and at the same time 
giving a pull to every bell he passes. After going some dis- 
tance he returns to his wagon and empties, as he drives through 
the street he has just gone over, the vessels that have been hur- 
riedly set out on the pavement. The cities of Rotterdam 
and Amsterdam are as cleanly as their people, and even with 
the hundreds of canals running though them I was surprised to 
detect no disagreeable odor. But in one place, at The Hague, 
in crossing a large canal, if my eyes had been shut, I would 
have thought I was down in the bowels of the ill-smelling ship 
which brought us over. 

We arrived at Cologne at 4:40 p. m., and putting our hand 
baggage in vehicles for the hotel,, walked to the cathedral and 
took it. We left the spire, which is the tallest in the world, not 
even excepting those in the deserts of Egypt. We had learn- 
ed this in the British Museum, where there was one great wall 
upon which we grouped the designs of all the principal spires, 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 55 

domes and monuments on the globe, the one on Trinity Church, 
New York, being rather an insignificant one in the group. 
After promenading about the aisles of the great church, see- 
ing this altar and that, and getting lost every ten minutes, we 
were divided into squads and taken under proper guard down 
into the treasure rooms. And here began our joy over true 
relics, relics that are worth talking about. We were first 
mrached around the shrine containing the remains of the three 
wise men. I wish I could describe it in a way lo make you 
realize its magnificence. But that could not be done except 
through the instrumentality of your own sight. Let me say 
that it is about as large as a good sized chicken coop, solid gold, 
with the figures of the twelve Apostles in niches on either side, 
and angels, cherubs and seraphims at every nook and corner, 
while it is ornamented with 1440 precious stones of almost every 
known variety, from the pearl of the size of a pea to a topaz as 
large as a goose egg. At one end are placed the three skulls 
in recesses behind little windows, and these ghastly evidences 
of death stare at you with their heads encircled by wreaths of 
diamonds, and their jaws swathed in cloths literally covered 
with precious stones that sparkled in the gas light as we looked 
in wonder upon the display. The custodian told us this was 
the finest shrine in the world, and all the guide books say the 
same. So you see we have fallen early among the superlatives. 
I can not recount the riches here, but next in order to this 
shrine containing these ancient bones, was the one which held 
those of the architect of the building. Few artists find a home, 
at last, among such splendor. But that which touched us most 
were two links from the identical chain with which St. Peter 
was chained when in prison. We expect to find the other links 
and have the story complete after a while. In one corner of 
one of the transepts is the reclining monument of some great 
Pope or Cardinal, and the relic hunters knocked off the ear of 
one of the dogs the feet of the figure rested upon ; then the big 
toe of the figure itself, and finally the nose, when the custodians, 
fearing it might get disfigured, had it encased in a strong cage 
of iron. The lost portions are replaced by plaster of Paris. I 
quote a description of the church : 



56 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

' ' The Cathedral is a crucifixion structure, the nave being 
flanked with double, and the transept with single aisles. Total 
length 444 feet, breadth 201 feet, length of transepts 292 feet, 
height of walls 150 feet, height of roof 201 feet, height of cen- 
tral tower 375 feet. This enormous mass of masonry is enliven- 
ed by a profusion of flying buttresses, turrets, gurgoyles, galler- 
ies, cornices, foliage, etc. The largest of the bells, cast in 1874, 
from the metal of French guns, weighs twenty-five tons. There 
are two others, cast in 1447 and 1448, and weigh respectively 
six and eleven tons." 

There are three hundred workmen engaged upon the building 
renovating it and restoring the decayed portions. The new 
work is marvelously handsome. 

From this cathedral some of us proceeded, on foot, to the 
church of St. Ursula while the larger number, who were worn 
out by the fatigues of the day, took carriages and were driven 
to the Grand Hotel Victoria. This church was erected in com- 
memoration of St. Ursula, who is reported to have headed a 
little party of 11,000 virgins in a tour to Rome, all of whom 
were slain by the Huns while en route, whether going or re- 
turning there seems to be some conflict in the authorities. Rut 
there is no conflict about the bones of St Ursula herself, (many 
of which are exhibited separately in the most costly trappings) 
being her own bones instead of those of some" other lady who 
accompanied the expedition. In the church they have the 
skulls and bones of these unfortunate tourists, the former in a 
kind of honey-combed cases, covered with glass, all about over 
the wails, while the other bones are corded up in vaults on the 
floor, and can be seen through glass windows. It seems that 
recently some malicious individual has circulated the rumor 
that a few careless persons, not very well posted in anatomy, 
who were entrusted with the work of gathering up these bones, 
made a mistake and got a few sheep's bones. I don't believe 
it. I can't see how such an error could have been committed. 
It is wrong to credit the rumor. 

In the treasure room the upper part of the four walls, reach- 
ing fifty feet or more high, are ornamented with these bones, 
worked into wreaths ; figures and letters forming Latin inscrip- 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 57 

tions. It was a bony diet as one of our party remarked, The 
skulls of the more "toney" fellows were encased in vessels of 
different kinds and duly labelled in Latin. The right hand of 
St. Ursula, her left foot, her right eye tooth and many other 
separate bones of the skeleton were, each in turn, exhibited and 
descanted upon. And so with others. Some of our people 
were silly enough to ask how it was possible to identify these 
bones after a lapse of a thousand years, but the custodian as- 
sured them there was no trouble about it. It seems to me some 
people will never cease asking foolish questions. Here, also, 
was one of the stone vessels used by Christ at the miracle of 
converting water into wine, and in a hermetrically sealed glass 
vessel, to prevent decay or destruction by wood borers, sur- 
mounted by rare stones, were two of the thorns of the crown in 
a perfect state of preservation. We were all glad to see that 
so much pains had been taken to hand down to succeding gen- 
erations these valuable relics in good order. We have depu- 
tized Henry, a bright young fellow, resident of Honolulu, but 
just now from Oberlin College, and spending his vacation on 
this tour, to keep an inventory of the thorns on the way to see 
if none have been lost. His score now stands two. 

From the church we went to the hotel, and after washing off 
some of the Holland and German dirt, sat down with all the 
party and began our dinner, which was concluded, in seven 
courses, at ten o'clock. I went through all for the first time, 
but about one o'clock frightened my roommates with one of the 
most terrible cases of nightmare on record. Some of the party, 
after dinner, went over the Rhine on the pontoon bridge, and 
knocked about among the nice gardens over there and heard 
the music served free to visitors. I can now understand why 
the phrase "over the Rhine" has grown so popular. The peo- 
ple of Cologne could find no more pleasant place to while away 
a summer evening. The very best of them go there, and the 
places are as orderly as a church during a sermon. After dis- 
appointing the boys who climbed up to the windows to see us 
dining, by closing the shutters, and having a nice night's rest 
in Cologne, where all the sweet smells ere bottled for export 
and all the bad ones left in their own streets, we took passage 
8 



58 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

on an elegant steamer, at 9 o'clock a. m., and steamed away up 
the Rhine. 

We had a lovely day in all respects, and saw the beautiful 
scenery which has a reputation the world over. It must be 
seen to be appreciated. Neither pen nor picture can convey an 
idea of its beauties. The entire journey from Cologne to Bie- 
brich, where we disembarked to take carriages for this place, is 
one of unbroken interest. There is not a moment that you feel 
you can spare to go into the cabin for fear you will lose some 
entertaining part of the scene. The stream is much larger than 
I expected to. find it, and its current, I would judge, as rapid 
as the lower Mississippi, if not more so. The hills on either 
side are in the very highest state of cultivation, and the old 
castles, residences, towns and little fields, looking like a patch- 
work quilt composed alone of green pieces of varied shades 
and the brown of ripening grain, constitute, doubtless, a pic- 
ture unequalled in the world. I had left home with the deter- 
mination to believe the scenery on the Hudson was superior, 
but having seen the Rhine, and passing through its loveliness as 
I write these lines, I couldn't keep my resolution. I lay aside 
my national prejudices and give it up to the Rhine. Ruins and 
old castles are continually in sight, and beautiful pictures suc- 
ceed each other in such rapid succession that the interest never 
flags throughout the day, but exclamations of surprise and de- 
light are continually heard on every hand. Just as the sun is 
dropping behind the high hills we come to Bingen, where in 
song, at least, lived the "Soldier of the Legion," who "lay dy- 
ing in Algiers," and who sent the feeling messages to his broth- 
ers and comrades; his mother, his sister, and that other not a 
sister, but dearer than them all. I was sorry that they pro- 
nounce it Bingen. But here the highlands ceased, the river 
spread out among some little islands, and we soon go down to 
dinner. At Bingen quite a number of tourists, mostly English, 
and some Americans, got off for the night. Later, we reached 
Biebrich, where we took carriages and had a lovely drive of 
three miles to Weisbaden, and went at once to bed. 

Getting up early this morning, many of us went to the famous 
springs, drank some of the hot and nasty water, and saw the 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 59 

famous gambling places, now closed. After breakfast we ran 
over to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where we drove about the city 
and spent four hours seeing the sights there, among them the 
old Jewish quarter, Rothschild's old house, his present banking 
house, the house from which Martin Luther preached, Guten- 
berg's monument, the picture and art galleries, and many other 
places. As our long line of carriages strung about through the 
city, I fancied the people looked at us as though we were a set 
of gumps. It was at this place we were shown through a gal- 
lery of statuary which seems to have been selected on account 
of its "loud" character. It was an early, unexpected and 
rather an amusing dose to the seventy-four. 

We arrived at this place at 5 p. m., and after dinner went to 
see the "boss" castle of Europe, which overlooks this city of 
students and cheap pipes, and after gazing upon the ruins and 
groping about in the subterranean passages, one of which leads 
over three miles, some of us had a long drive, by moonlight, 
upon the hill-tops, and had a nice view of the city by gas-light. 
We rest here to-morrow, it being Sunday, and leave about noon 
Monday for Stuttgart. Having missed an entire day without 
seeing a castle or cathedral we will be hungry for them. It is 
getting so now that if we do not see one or the other of these 
every hour we are complaining about it. 

I can not close the letter without returning to Weisbaden to 
say that it is a very attractive place, with wide, clean streets, 
and with such royal avenues of stately and wide spreading trees 
as to make it charming to promenaders. Its parks are exten- 
sive and handsome and are kept in perfect order, the lakes in 
them being covered with water fowls, even wild and untamed 
ones, and full of fish. The drive from Bierbrich was through 
an unbroken avenue of immense sycamores, reaching nearly 
across the broad street, and through which it seemed impossible 
for even one stray ray of the sun to penetrate. 



6o THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 



LETTER IX. 



Heidelberg again— The Carriage Ride up the Neckar— Germany nearly everywhere 
a Garden— The fighting Students— Too much Carving— Our first Washing- 
Arrival at Stuttgart, and the Great Picture Galleries there— Treatment of 
Relics by Tourists — Heavy financial transactions— A stop of two hours at 
Ulin — A cheap lunch and low priced Fruit — Arrival at Munich— The Abstin- 
ence members taking to wine on account of bad reputation of water— Mr 
Potter, Consul at Stuttgart, gives a party and pays a compliment. 

Munich, Bavaria, July 23, 1S79. 

We fared sumptuously at the Hotel Schreider in Heidelberg, 
and bankrupted ourselves in the purchase of pipes and ivory 
ornaments. On Sunday morning many of the party went up to 
the castle again, some in carriages and some on foot, returning 
in time for services in the English church there. At one 
o'clock the cavalcade were placed in open carriages and had a 
ten miles ride into the country. Nearly every one had on his 
or her store clothes, and it was the first time on the Continent 
of Europe that we looked like a civilized people. For once I 
felt proud of my countrymen. Heretofore, when not on the 
move, it was either raining or threatening to do so ; and the 
manner in which we have been dressed, and especially the 
ladies, made us look more like a body of restless and noisy 
mummies, swathed to the chin and hooded to the eyes, than a 
party of sight-seers from enlightened America. I have been 
glad that we have so often been taken for Englishmen. 

Our drive was out the long street through the old gateway 
and up the south bank of the Neckar, over a road that was as 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 6 1 

smooth, as a floor. To the right of us was the railroad, running, 
for the most part, on a terrace supported by a wall composed 
of red sand-stone and dressed as nicely as if in a costly dwell- 
ing. Back of this lay the high range of hills, reaching to the 
proportions of small mountains, and where not covered with 
trees, cultivated in little patches set as closely together as the 
stones in a piece of Mosaic work. Below and to the left, lay 
the swift running Neckar, beyond which rose another imposing 
range of hills, with such varied changes, as we drove along, in 
their height and formation, that they could not grow monoton- 
ous. At their base wound a broad white pike, similar to the 
one on which we were driving. On either side of the road were 
rows of trees, all of the fruit or nut bearing species, many of 
them laden with their fruit and almost within reach as I sat in 
the high seat by the driver. Often there would be rows of 
hedges nicely pruned, and so thick where the trees grew up 
through them as to appear a part of the trees themselves. In 
some places, where the bank was at all abrupt between the road 
and the river, there ran a row of large sandstone posts about a 
foot square and six feet apart, dressed as if to ornament a gate- 
way leading to some rich man's residence. The fruit and nut 
bearing trees were all tastefully pruned, and every foot of ground 
not used for foot-paths was covered with some kind of vegeta- 
tion except weeds. Grass grew up to the very edges of the 
road, the stone wall holding the terrace upon which ran the rail- 
road even being sodded on top and covered with grass. There 
was no rubbish anywhere. Every stick or limb or chip had 
been gathered, and the little pastures and tiny fields were as 
tidy as any lawn. Bare ground, except in the roads, upon per- 
pendicular cliffs where vegetation can not grow, and in small 
patches where the soil has just been turned over for another 
crop, is never seen. So far, Germany has been one vast park 
where careful men have kept all things in pleasing order. 

In our drive we passed through two little towns and ended 
the drive within the third. Queer looking places to raw Amer- 
icans are these little towns. The streets are narrow and being 
made to conform to the sinuosities of the hills upon which they 
are built, appear, from a distance, like so many mud-daubers' 



62 THE BIG AMERICAN' CARAVAN'S 

nests stuck against the cornices of a big, old house. Here we 
had a long walk — to see some castles of course. It was feared 
we could not pass an entire day without seeing a castle and re- 
tain our health. So we climbed up and up, gathered bouquets, 
stuffed our hats full of leaves, admired the long stretch of beau- 
tiful landscape that lay spread out before us, returned to the 
carriages with red cheeks and good appetites, and drove home 
to a bounteous 6 o'clock dinner. 

It rained hard during the night, but the next morning was 
bright and cool, with a stiff breeze blowing through the streets. 
We were to leave Heidelberg at 10 a. m., but the departure 
was postponed to I p. m . , and we spent the time shopping and 
paying about a price and a half more than the citizens, and 
still getting things at prices that seemed cheap to us. 

Our people were all the time on the lookout for students 
with faces disfigured by scars obtained in their numerous duels 
with swords ; and they not only saw an abundance of these, 
but every now and then one would come along having his face 
plastered and bandaged up to hide and cure the results of more 
recent chopping. My guess is that one-third of the students 
of Heidelberg carry away some kind of scar on leaving Heidel- 
berg. I have no high admiration of the schools of this part of 
the country. I am aware that it is popular for students from 
our own land to come here, but very many of them go to the bad. 
The morals of those they fall in with are not of a high order, 
and there is no restraint upon their conduct. A false sentiment 
with reference to sword exercise between members of different 
societies overshadows everything else, and education is a sec- 
ondary consideration. The popular student is one who has 
been successful in the greater number of combats. The duel- 
ists do not engage to satisfy wounded honor, but often are total 
strangers, being selected by their respective societies to repre- 
sent them. I would never send a boy of mine, alone, to the 
institutions of Germany to obtain an education. 

Our party were affected by this vitiated air, and felt like 
doing some carving on their own account. Perhaps it would 
have been more justifiable in our case. Our soiled linen had 
accumulated on us, and some were running their duds through 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 63 

the second time. We were told Saturday evening washing 
would be done and returned to us at 7 o'clock Monday morning. 
Well, you ought to have seen that washing going out, some of 
the ladies having something less, and not many less, than one 
hundred pieces each. And you ought to have seen it coming 
back in big baskets full clear up to noon, and Tom, Dick and 
Harry charging round over the hotel excited, saying ugly words 
and jabbering to waiters, who, with consternation in their faces, 
understood nothing that was said except there were a lot of 
Americans terribly mad. The washing was not done in the 
hotel, but farmed out to washerwomen in various parts of the 
city, and every time one would come in with a batch of clothes, 
about forty of us would bear down upon her and capture her big 
basket and dive into it like so many pigs into a swill tub just in 
receipt of a fresh invoice of slops. Of course things got mixed, 
but suspicion has grown up that some of the more energetic 
ones laid in a good supply. This is the first real disadvantage 
we have experienced from our party being so large. 

At 4 p. m. Monday the seventy-four dropped in upon the 
people of Stuttgart like a Summer shower, overflowing one ho- 
tel and partially inundating another. I say seventy- four — we 
lost one of our number at a station on the way where she slipped 
by the guard, and while out gazing around, the train sped away 
and left her. But she came in on the next train. As soon as 
we could shake ourselves we marched about in column over the 
place, saw the lovely gardens and parks, and the various monu- 
ments, and moped about through the great picturt galleries in 
the Museum. Here we fell in with such men as Reubens, 
Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Leonardo de Vinci, Murrillo and Ra- 
fael. But for all that I don' think some of our folks were as 
enthused as they should have been. I saw two or three 
leaning against some of the larger gilt frames to rest themselves, 
while others would place their hands on the mountings and 
stand talking to other members of the party so like a street 
corner loafer leaning against a friendly column for support. I 
expect one of these days to see a big picture of Reubens — say 
something like the Transfiguration — taken bodily from the wall 
and made a bed of for some weary member of the party. Amer- 



64 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

icans, as a general thing, are very careless, to put it mildly, as 
to their treatment of relics. They are not allowed to carry 
their canes or umbrellas into museums and art galleries to 
punch out the eyes and otherwise disfigure the articles on exhi- 
bition, but I have seen some of our very nicest people walk 
deliberately up to a rare painting and designate some particular 
spot by stuffing their dirty fingers against it. Many of the 
pictures are hundreds of years old, and held as almost sacred 
by the corporations and Governments to which they belong, 
and if one thoughtless person in every thousand who visit them 
should touch one picture, in any part, it would, in time, be 
utterly ruined. I do not wonder that a tremor disturbs the 
body of the custodian of relics when his precinct is invaded by a 
pack of Americans. Experience has taught that they are to be 
dreaded. Very many of the average ones have about as much 
conception of the value of a fine painting and the care that 
should be taken of it as a pig has of holidays. This is the plain 
unvarnished truth about it. 

Corning up the Rhine we had the scare in the matter of 
finances experienced by Mark Twain and his friends the time 
one of his party treated to a breakfast. It being a long time 
between our breakfast and dinner we ordered a lunch for six of 
us, served under the awning of the steamer, and on eating it up, 
we found we had consumed sixteen sandwiches at forty pfen- 
nigs each, nine cups of coffee at thirty each, and one dish of 
strawberries at seventy, total 980 pfennigs. It was an awful 
bill but we had consumed the provender and had to pay for it, 
I thought it would have taught us a lesson to inquire another 
time the price of things before buying, but the very next day 
two of us joined in and went to the extravagance of a bottle of 
wine at a cost of 1 10 pfennigs. At Heidelberg the "little one" 
bought some carved ivory traps and when through was con- 
fronted with a collossal bill aggregating 6,690 pfennigs. You 
ought to have seen her face. Visions of the silk dress and the 
kid gloves she contemplated buying at Naples vanished like a 
dream. I can see her face at this moment with the shade of 
surprise and mortification passing over it. But she has recov- 
ered, and I think may still be able to make her purchases in 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 6$ 

Naples if they give us time there. To sum it up the lunch 
cost, all told, about $2 45 ; the bottle of wine 27 cents, and the 
ivory ornaments $16 75. They designate all smaller values by 
marks, about twenty-four cents, and it takes one hundred pfen- 
nigs to make a mark. 

Leaving Stuttgart at 9 o'clock the morning after arrival, we 
landed in Ulm in an hour or so, and leaving our luggage in the 
cars, which were detached from the main train to await our re- 
turn, we proceeded to capture the quiet place, which was done 
without the loss of a man. We promenaded the city, and vis- 
ited the cathedral, which is over five hundred feet in length, and 
in that respect has the advantage of the one in Cologne, but 
falling short in the matter of its tower. Some of us were green 
enough to climb the 352 steps leading to the highest parapet, 
and came twisting down the spiral staircase, feeling that we 
needed the services of a surgeon to put splints upon our legs, 
and hardly knowing the position of our bodies with reference to 
other terrestrial objects. This cathedral contained no bones or 
other relics and consequently had but little interest to us. Af- 
ter getting outside I lost trryself in a search for views, and in 
passing an old fruit woman I gave her four cents worth of her 
cheap money, and by signs demanded their equivalent in cher. 
ries — nice ones. After fishing about behind her stand a mo- 
ment she brought out a big paper sack and filled the thing so full 
I had to carry it in my arms like a boy would an arm full of 
chips. Presently I fell in with a party at the Roaring Lion 
Tavern. I presume that was the name, as a very wide-mouth- 
ed, gilt lion stood on a projection over the door — and they were 
as busy as bees devouring an eight cent lunch. Every one 
warns us against drinking water in this country, and I have been 
taking the warnirg. So I ordered a glass of wine, holding up 
my glass and yelling out "vine." Of course we all have to 
talk to these foreigners in a tone totally unknown, and in a pitch 
of voice that would shock a deaf person. The fellow looked at 
me with an air of astonishment, and then fetched a small bottle- 
full, which I dispatched on the spot, and handed over another 
eight cents to liquidate the bill. I mention these things to 
show how cheap some things are over here. 
9 



66 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN 's 

We landed at this city at half-past seven, and were again 
quartered at two hotels. We spent the day busily seeing the 
museums and picture galleries, which are probably as fine as we 
shall see on our tour This is a nice city, and full of splendid 
looking soldiers in bright new uniforms. The stores are quite 
gaudy, and prices apparently low. Good water is said to be out 
of the question, and some of our temperance people are talking 
about taking to wine. They do not think they should risk their 
lives in adherance to a principle. Of course not. I saw one 
sip down a glass-full yesterday, and after smacking her lips 
rather approvingly, she declared she could see nothing intoxi- 
cating in that. To be sure. 

At Stuttgart some twenty-five of the party were invited to 
call and see Mr. Potter, the resident Consul there, and who is 
from Boston. We found him a jovial fellow and he fed and 
wined us on the best of the land. There were toasts and 
speeches, and the eagle did an awful amount of flapping. Mr. 
Potter said that Americans rarely called upon him except to get 
his aid in rescuing them from trouble, and that we were the 
only party who brought him all sunshine and no trouble. Take 
that as an offset to our faults. 

We will spend another day in Munich, wear ourselves out in 
trotting around, visit the International Exhibition of Paintings 
now in progress, and then strike out through Austria for Italy. 
Since last Saturday the weather has been very cool and our 
thickest garments are comfortable. To-day has been cloud)/, 
with occasional light showers. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 6j 



LETTER X. 



Magnificent Munich— The great Museum and Picture Galleries— The King's Chapel 
—Ancient feats— Cheap Beer and Wine— A Railroad ride across the Alps- 
Imposing scenery— Crazy Tourists — Arrival at the old City of Verona— Aston- 
ished Citizens— Interesting localities— Tears over Juliet's tomb— Beggars of 
Verona— Arrival at Venice and a Gondola ride to the Hotel -The shinplasters 
of Italy. 

Venice, Italy, July 26, 1879. 

Until 3 o'clock of our second day in Munich we spent the 
time in a body, going first to the National Museum and gallop- 
ing through it. It would justify a stay of a day or more among 
its rich and entertaining relics if one could spare that much 
time Its rare and handsome tapestry, its ornaments of ivory, 
and its long list of furniture, inlaid with pearl, ivory and pre- 
cious stones, alone make one feel like loitering and losing other 
sights in the city, but our conductor hurries us along, so we may 
not miss any places in the programme. The next visit was to 
the picture gallery containing the modern paintings, which 
pleased my eyes. After this we were placed in carriages and 
driven through the city, around the principal monuments and 
public buildings, and out into the vast park in the suburb. 
We entered the town hall (rathhaus) and saw the big picture 
there painted by Piloty in five years and finished two months 
ago, being an alegorical history of Bavaria, and representing art- 



6S THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

ists, bishops, sculptors, composers and those belonging to 
other different arts and sciences. It is sixty feet in length and 
eighteen feet high, and contains 230 figures, most of them life 
size an^l full length, and each one a study within itself. They 
do such things up royally in this country. 

The nex,t place we got out of our carriages to enter was the 
King's chapel. I regret my inability to put in language a 
description of this place so as to convey to you a proper idea of 
its magnificence. It is all bright and new, and every part of the 
vast structure visible is of the most handsome colored and 
variegated marble, and polished till it reflects surrounding ob- 
jects. The columns charm the eye, and as you look, you won- 
der and wonder again why this splendor in a house of worship ? 
The King's seat is in an alcove of the gallery and could not be 
seen from the ground floor, and we were not permitted to go up 
there. I presume we would have gone any how if the door had 
not been locked and barred, for when some of our people start- 
ed up the steps leading to the platform in front of the altar, and 
a big fat woman threw up her hands in holy horror, and tried to 
bar the way, we paid about as much attention to her as though 
she had been a shadow. When our brigade bear down upon a 
remonstrating custodian we crush him on the spot. 

There were many other places we visited, but I can not stop 
to name them. At one of the courts of the King's old palace 
there were three spikes driven high up in the wall at different 
distances from the ground, with an inscription that three certain 
celebrities had jumped as high as the points designated by the 
spikes; and near by lay a stone weighing 350 pounds which 
had been thrown by one of these men half way across the large 
court-yard. It was fastened to the pavement by heavy iron 
bolts and bars. Our conductor got upon the stone and said it 
had been heaved at a man for asking too many questions, and 
that it had been named "Questioners, Beware." 

From here we drove to the hotels and took dinner, after 
which each acted upon his own hook, the greater number spend- 
ing the time rubbing their noses against shop windows. We 
all like Munich ever so much. It is a place worth any one's 
while to see ; and to devotees of art it offers unusual attractions 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 69 

Temperance people can't live here, of course, if what we hear 
is true, for water is at a discount and is only taken inwardly 
in its natural state by the reckless. But substitutes being very 
cheap the unscrupulous can get along pretty well. Beer costs 
a fraction over two and a half cents for about a quart, and the 
cheaper wines can be bought for ten to fifteen cents per bottle. 
With such prices as these, Maine principles have a hard time of 
it. I don't know where they get decent water to make their 
excellent beer, for the Iser goes dashing by the city like a mill 
race and about the color of dirty milk; and the "blue Danube," 
which we crossed at Ulm, Avas about the color of the lower 
Mississippi. At what season of the year it becomes "blue" I 
have not been able to ascertain. 

The above was written at Munich. We left there at 9 o'clock 
day before yesterday morning by rail, and in less than an hour 
the cry of "the Alps, the Alps," was heard from the car win- 
dows. We were traveling up the river Inn, the mountains ap- 
pearing first on our right. It was not long, however, till they 
also appeared upon our left, and very soon we were passing 
up the beautiful valley with the peaks on either side frowning 
down upon us. Not long afterwards snow began to appear in 
patches, till in some places, nearer the summit, the higher 
peaks would be nearly covered. The valley was in the highest 
state of cultivation, and sometimes houses would be perched so 
far up the mountain sides that they looked like the abodes of 
a^igmy people. Castles were without number, and crucifixes 
stood here and there till they early ceased to be even a subject 
of comment. Churches — nearly all tower with little dabs of 
buildings stuck to them — were continually in view, very many 
of them located in odd-looking places, and often on such high 
and craggy eminences that the wonder is how woi shippers ap- 
proach them. The little grape patches on the mountain sides 
were made and held in place by great stone walls, and the 
thousands and thousands of these terraces gave evidence of the 
scarcity of tillable soil in this country and the labor required to 
keep it in order. 

After creeping about half way to the summit of the pass, we 
took up the river Sill and followed that to the divide, the n 



/O THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

taking down the Eisack and Adige till we fell into the plain, 
after dark, in Italy. The road-bed upon which our train ran is 
a rare and massive work, and it is hard even to guess what 
great labor and money were spent in its construction. Nearly 
all the little streams and rivulets which cross it are paved and 
walled like gutters as far as the eye can reach, while in many 
places acres of the mountain sides, above the road, are paved 
like a great city wharf to prevent slides. Then come bridges, 
diches, drains and culverts of massive proportions, while the 
road itself — double track in greater part — runs upon a ponder- 
ous stone wall. The ascent was slow and labored, giving ample 
time for a good view of the scenery upon either band. The 
descent was more rapid, but not frightfully so, though the iron 
rubbers attached to the brakes grew hot and smoked till it ap- 
peared as though every car was on fire underneath. Many of 
us became frightened and jumped about and sputtered at the 
guards to indicate the danger, but we might as well have en- 
deavored to discuss the subject with the] man in the moon. 
They were so calm and unmoved amid the smoke and stench 
of burning grease that we were, in time, assured of our safety. 

At the Austrian frontier our baggage was overhauled, and 
again when we entered Italy, where cigars suffered ; and some 
of our party got fighting mad and jabbered at the officers in an 
amusing way. One young gent who had fired his pistol off 
going through the tunnel, was reported ahead by telegraph, 
and on the arrival of the train at the Italian station that imple- 
ment of destruction was taken away from him. 1 am sorrry to 
say many of our party are carrying around young blunderbusses 
with them in these foreign lands. The revenue officials seem 
only to be after cigars and tobacco, and I guess they chew and 
smoke all they confiscate. 

This journey occupied the entire day, and when the moon— 
which looks for all the world like the one we left at home— ap- 
peared over the mountain tops to the west of us, we were still 
speeding down the steep decline. It was a beautiful day, and 
for the entire distance the scenery was most magnificent. Our. 
people were wild with excitement, which found no abatement 
till night shut out the scene. We were continually bouncing 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. J I 

up and running from one window to the other and thrusting out 
our heads to get a better view. "Look here!" "Oh, come 
here!" "Just see this!" "Oh, see, see!" were the exclama- 
tions continually heard ; and we acted so like a set of wild peo- 
ple I suspect the thousands of citizens we passed on the way 
imagined our train was conveying the inmates of a lunatic asy- 
lum from one country to another. Well, it was enough to run 
one crazy to be in three Empires in one day and see such grand- 
eur in nature. In a lake lying below us, almost at the summit 
of the pass, we saw trout striking at insects, and as we passed 
we could plainly see the beauties sporting in the water. We 
went through some thirty tunnels but none of them of any great 
length. 

We reached Verona just before midnight, after the longest 
unbroken ride we have had since leaving London, and as our 
long line of omnibusses went thundering through the narrow- 
streets, the clocks were ringing out the hour of twelve. We 
were driven into an open court around which was the hotel, 
with just one row of rooms in each story, opening upon galleries 
running around the inside. The rooms upon the ground floor 
opened upon the paved court, where stood the omnibusses. 
The house had the appearance of having escaped the flood, and 
the lower rooms smelled like a charnel house. They were 
frescoed in the most gaudy colors, and the beds were white and 
clean, but the bright sunshine had not been in those rooms 
within the last hundred years. The rooms higher up were dry 
and airy. 

The next morning we entered the church near by, and then 
marched through the town for an hour or so in column, and cre- 
ated a consternation we had not witnessed before. As we 
would pass the stores and shops the inmates would gaze at the 
first few with an air of curiosity a moment, then a look of won- 
derment crept over their faces, succeeded by a rush to the doors 
with whatever their hands held at the time. The smith's lifted 
hammer stopped poised in the air, the shoemaker got no far- 
ther than to run his awl into the leather, while those walking 
along the street halted and gazed at the cavalcade, and those 
near by, in intersecting streets, hurried up to see the show. 
People at doors would dash into the house to tell the other in- 



"J2 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

mates, and windows were filled with staring eyes. They would 
look at the head and then at the rear of the straggling column, 
and end by throwing up their hands in utter astonishment. Of 
course they talked to one another. I never heard the like of it. 
But about all we could catch was the word "Americano." 
At one court yard they collected and rather crowded us, having 
a look in their faces as though wondering what in the name of 
heavens all these folks meant by being so far away from home 
staring at these old buildings. 

The morning was excessively warm, and sunny Italy was 
with us in dead earnest. The streets were mostly narrow and 
had a combination of smells which gave an unpleasant twist to 
our noses, which I am apprehensive may become permanent. 
Getting into carriages, finally, we had a lorig drive and saw all 
the churches, the tomb of Juliet, the house of the Capulets, but 
no trace of the love sick Romeo — Poor fellow ! How sad it is he 
depends upon the immortal Shakspeare for the perpetuation of 
his own memory. We went through quite a pantomime of grief 
over the coffin of Juliet, and I imagine the few citizens who 
witnessed it took us to be a very silly, tender hearted set. 

We saw the great amphitheater, second only to the one at 
Rome, in a better state of preservation and capable of seating 
35,000 spectators or furnishing standing room for 70,000. Its 
interior is nearly perfect and the dens where the prisoners and 
wild beasts were kept have not been destroyed. And the en- 
trances for these into the arena are all there as they were in 
the days when the inhuman butcheries were witnessed by thous- 
ands of miserable, garlic-eating, dirty, applauding, heartless 
spectators. Some of our folks thought the citizens stared at 
us. I am waiting till we reach the place where the residents 
can stare harder and longer than we can. Why, at one of the 
churches that we entered there was quite a congregation inside, 
and services were being conducted; yet we paraded, about the 
aisles, talked, pointed at this thing and that, and one half of 
us actually strolled up and filed along near the altar and be- 
tween the officiating priest and the worshipping congregation. 
Suppose a pack of foreigners were to do that in our country. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 73 

It was here we met our first annoyance in the shape of beg- 
gars. At Amsterdam one rather bright little fellow stuck out 
his hat, but upon our looking at him rather curiously he seem- 
ed to become ashamed of himself, and put it back upon his 
head. At Heidelberg, when we drove out and walked up to a 
far off castle, we passed three beggars, neatly dressed Germans, 
who sought alms. Some of us took off our hats and bowed to 
them as though they were Princes, but if we attempt to 
keep that up our necks are gone, and no mistake. These 
were the only beggars we had seen until we fell on Verona ; 
and these were mostly boys and girls who laid in wait for us 
at every turn and corner, following us into churches and other 
places, and making miserable nuisances of themselves. My 
guess, on the threshold of Italy, is that about the first thing 
many of her children learn is the art of begging. 

We left Verona at 1 1 a. m., and had a hot and dusty ride of 
five hours At Padua we met the fifth, or Irish, section on 
their way from Venice to Florence. And such a hand shaking 
and jabbering I never saw. This section is composed of those 
who came over a week earlier than we did. But the noise and 
confusion did not last long, as each train soon moved on. At 
four o'clock p. m. our train landed us on one of the canals of 
Venice, and we were taken to our hotels in gondolas. I think 
I shall never abuse American hackmen again for their persis- 
tency in seeking passengers after seeing these legions of vil- 
lainous looking gondoliers trying to snatch people bald-headed 
into their black crafts. As to gondoliers — but let me reserve 
them and Venice for another letter. I have just been looking 
at the miserable, dirty shinplasters we have had thrust at us as 
a circulating medium, and I am mad. I'll go out and look at 
the moon shining over the Adriatic and the Grand Canal and I 
may feel better. 



10 



74 THE BIG AMERICAN CAKAVAN S 



LETTER XL 



Venice — The Gondolier— No Horses or Vehicles in this City of the Sea — Visit to 
the Palace of the Doges, and other interesting places — cheap living — The 
Water supply — Ice a beverage— Comparison between American and English 
Growlers. 

Venice, Italy, July 28, 1879. 

I do not know how to write you a letter about Venice. It is 
such an odd place and has been the subject of so many correspond- 
ents that I could hardly expect to produce something new. I 
had read a great deal about it myself, at home, and upon arrival 
was carried away as much as I have been with other places on 
the journey, but I find what is the experience of most of our 
party, that the more we see of it and drift lazily in our gondolas 
over its canals and through its narrow and awfully crooked 
streets, the interest in the place grows upon me, and I feel that 
I shall regret it when the hour for our departure comes. It is 
certainly a place where locomotion is not tiresome and where 
no great amount of dust can be raised by charging through the 
streets. 

There is not a horse in the city of Venice, and I have not 
seen a single vehicle on wheels, though there is much of the 
city which may be traversed on dry land. What streets there 
are are verv narrow and seem to have been constructed with a 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE, 75 

special view to run any single one towards every point of the 
compass and take in also every degree of the circle. I can ac- 
count for the many and sharp turns in the canals that had to 
conform to the little islands upon which the city was built, but 
I can not comprehend why the streets were built so unless it was 
upon the principle that the builders thought they could obtain 
more street front by that species of engineering. Nearly all 
species of transportation are done by gondolas and other water 
craft. The gondolier is a fraud and a humbug, except in so far 
as he is able to manage his long, narrow, black craft with con- 
summate skill. Mark Twain tells in graphic language how 
these fellows whip around corners and dodge each other in the 
most miraculous manner, but no one will ever be able to realize 
the truth about it till they come here and see it done, and per- 
haps even then, those unaccustomed to managing water-craft 
will fail to appreciate the difficulties to be encountered. Yes- 
terday, when in the Grand Canal following up a floating band of 
music that was out in a shower of flags and gaudy trappings to 
serenade the town, some of our adventurous gentlemen tried 
their hand at the oar, and always ended by giving the inmates 
of the boat a splashing, and coming near turning a summersault 
into the water. This morning my finances having reached a 
low ebb and all the members of the party having hesitated 
about adding to my obligations, I had to interview a banker of 
Venice named in my letter of credit. I couldn't go overland 
and hired one of the six or ten thousand pirates to transport me 
there in his floating coffin. We took short cuts and found a 
large number of very crooked and narrow streets. Gondolas 
were as thick as beggars in Verona — some tied close to the 
walls by means of rings therein, others going our way, some 
faster and some slower, and many meeting us, but never a single 
collision. All at once a dark prow would shoot around the corner 
looking for all the world as though it was going to give us a jolt 
amidships, but a "hi" from our gondolier and a "ho" from 
the other, either suddenly checked the speed and changed the 
course so unexpectedly and so happily as to allow the vessels 
to glide by each other in the most marvelous and harmless way. 
I can't admire the gondolier with his dark visage, his unkempt 



j6 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

hair andfhis unshaven face, his dirty shirt that fills with wind 
and looks like an inflated bladder around his body; I can't ad- 
mire him for his disposition to be boisterous, and to hold noisy 
converse with every chap within hearing ; nor can I feel kindly 
towards him when, after paying him the fee-allowed by law, he 
puts his hand to his mouth and goes through a dumb show of 
drinking to indicate that ; he would be pleased if you would fur- 
ther contribute to his happiness by throwing in a few centesnm 
with which to buy Winslow's soothing syrup, but I do admire 
the rascal for the dexterity he displays in the management of 
his boat, and the power he can put to his single oar without 
starting one drop of sweat at noon day in this warm Italian 
clime. I have purchased just five of these boats and an armful 
of pictures of them, and if the revenue man at New York don't 
confiscate the lot I will 'be able to show my friends just how 
they look. They are not very rapid when propelled by one 
man, and if I was in a big hurry to catch the train, I would pre- 
fer a hack. Their^ length is about thirty-five feet, with five, or 
five and a half feet width, and any quantity of rake. 

Half of yesterday and all of to-day have been devoted to 
sight-seeing and a long gondola ride in battalion. Yesterday 
afternoon six of us switched off from the main party and did the 
Palace of the Doges on our own hook. If we had seen no other 
evidence of the former grandeur of Venice, this Palace would 
have convinced us of it without the aid of history. Royal old 
butchers must have been those Doges whose villainous visages 
adorn the wall of this building, and who, in some cases, have 
been painted by the great masters in company with the Deity, 
and playing no second part at that. Covering one and of a 
large room is a painting, by Tintoretto, I believe — no by some 
other fellow — representing Christ, the Holy Virgin, two Saints 
in the back ground, and two of these old cut-throat Doges. 
There are no other figures in the picture, and those of the Doges 
stand out prominently as though all the others were adjuncts in 
the scene. I presume the painter executed the work as a mat- 
ter of compulsion, and that if he had not done so his head 
would have been chopped off in a twinkling. I hope he did, and 
that he had a wife and children depending on him for their 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. J J 

food from day to day. He could be excused for this prostitu- 
tion of his talents on no other grounds, and barely upon these. 
We passed through all the various rooms, including those of 
the Council of Three Hundred, the Council of Ten, and the Coun- 
cil of Three, who, with a cool villainy almost without a parallel, 
sent so^many a^poor devil in haste to his final account. We saw 
the hole through which were slipped the anonymous complaints 
that sealed the doom of the unsuspecting ; we passed over the 
Bridge of Sighs leading from the Palace to the dungeons across 
the canal, and were shown the passages to the right and to the 
left for the'two grades of prisoners, and the little door in the 
wall just at the water line, out of which came the bodies of those 
who died within. We went down into the dungeons, and with 
torches in our hands, groped about from room to room of this 
most gloomy place, and while doing so it was not hard to peo- 
ple, in imagination, the dark and noisome cells with wan and 
haggard prisoners, without light and hope, daily receiving their 
scant supply of rough food and worse water through the small 
holes cut in the stone walls, and courting death in preference to 
such a life as theirs. The guide also pointed out the head 
block where the heads of the condemned were hacked off; and 
nearby, the hole in the stone floor through which the blood 
might flow into the sea below. It is useless to state that these 
sights lascerated our feelings, and there is no question but that 
it was well for those old scoundrels that they were dead and 
buried some time ago. We even felt like hunting up their 
graves and rattling up their bones, and I suspect we would 
have done "it had we not feared falling into the same, error that 
was committed in the case of >the bones of the 11,000 virgins 
deposited in the Cathedral at Cologne — that of mixing in a few 
bones belonging to some other animals not in the big excursion. 
None of us were up in our anatomy, and the mistake might 
easily have occurred. We didn't want to put ourselves into a 
perspiratioivover the bones of some dead and forgotten sheep. 
But, all iokes aside, if any one can go down into the dungeons 
under the Palace of the Doges and see the evidences of cruelty 
which can not be mistaken, even without the aid of the gar- 
rulous guide, without being moved, my opinion is that he had 



7<S THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

better remain at home and go to bed and stay there. One oi 
our ladies, who went down later with the others, was overcome 
by the contemplation of the situation, and had to be taken 
above and out into the light of day. Our little squad got dis- 
gusted, gave up sight-seeing for the day, and went to the hotel 
and looked daggers even at these modern Italians as though 
they could be held responsible for the conduct of their ancestors. 

If I had not already worn you out with letters I would de- 
vote a very long one to Venice, and if I had not written to you 
at all I think I would make it the subject of two or three and 
let other places go by, but as it is and has been I will tell 
you that we have taken in nearly all that is novel to be seen ; 
have gone through the churches, picture galleries, the arsenal, 
the establishment where the mosaic and glass work are manu- 
factured, the markets and principal streets ; have loitered about 
the the square of St. Mark, seen the pigeons fed, and fed them 
ourselves, and sipoed our harmless drinks, and minced our 
ice cream in front of some of the numerous cafes there ; have 
seen the giants hammer out the hour on the great clock there, 
and gone up into the tall campanile and gazed over this city of 
the sea ; have crowded in front and darkened every one of the 
beautifully arranged shop windows around this square, and 
have bought and been cheated inside ; have jostled the priests 
in their own churches, taken their vacated seat in the confes- 
sional and been ejected by them ; have bumped up against sol- 
diers in the streets, run over priests and been run over by them, 
and have stared at the citizens and talked about them in a 
tons ue it is.perhaps well they do not understand ; and some of 
us have gotten homesick and stood upon the bridges in the soft 
moonlight and gazed across the Grand Canal out toward the 
Adriatic, while the gondoliers were passing to and fro through 
the shimmer and the sheen of the sparkling waves, their out- 
lines standing clear out against a horizon flecked with downy 
clouds, and some of us have nearly "bohooed" because we could 
not, at once, transport ourselves and this pleasannt scene to our 
own homes across the continent and the deep blue sea. 

Our hotels are rather comfortable — one ol them being quite 
fine — and well aired. Upon the theory that higher rooms are 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. Jg 

the better ones in Italy, the ladies are well up towards the roof, 
and have been complaining that they have to climb over one 
hundred steps when they come down, and remember they have 
forgotten something they left behind. We all complain at 
something. If we are not too high we are too low, and the 
happy medium is rarely ever found. I think it one of the won- 
ders our conductors have not gone stark mad, although we are 
having a nice time of it, traveling first class and nearly always 
stopping at the best hotels in the places visited. If Italy fur- 
nishes bad water, the conductors catch it ; if one hotel in a 
place won't hold us all, some of us think we have been 
selected to occupy the second rate one, and we give it to them ; 
if it rains, they are remiss in their duty ; if it is too warm, they 
are to blame ; if the customs of the country keep us waiting at 
the dinner table till every tardy member sits down before the 
soup is started around, and is then allowed to proceed no faster 
than the toothless ones, but required to sit there between 
courses while the pangs of hunger are gnawing our very vitals, 
we feel like converting them into food and dispatching them on 
the spot. And thus, through all the long list, we manage to 
rake up and growl about something. Still, the patient conduct- 
ors do not fall out with us, but say that we are models as com- 
pared to the same number of Englishmen ; even further, that 
they would hear ten growls from them where they hear one 
from us. Then I do leel sorry for those who have the manage- 
ment of English parties. 

It is thought that the average citizen of Venice can live at a 
cost of from two to five cents per day. Their chief luxuries are 
gondolas, moonshine and bilge water. I don't tmnk an am- 
bitious person would want to stay a thousand years in the 
place, and, especially if, at the close of his earthly career, he 
expected to have his bones deposited anywhere in the neigh- 
borhood of those of the bloodthirsty Doges who have gone be- 
fore him. The gondoliers are allowed twenty cents for one to 
four persons for the first hour, and ten cents for each succeeding 
hour for the entrie party. His horse don't eat, or die on his 
hands, and as his vehicle probably lasts for years, I guess if one 
of them gets "a load" once or twice a week he is happy, A 



80 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

very active and intelligent salesman in a large umbrella store, 
who had been to America and spoke English quite well, told me 
he got $14 per month for his services, and that was much above 
the average wages. 

Cistern water is used, and when the supply is exhausted — as 
it is most of the time — it is brought into the city from some 
point outside, in the hulls of boats, and turned into large public- 
cisterns, from whence it is taken for consumption, in copper 
buckets, one swung on either end of a pole, and carried on the 
shoulder by men and women. There is no pump x>r other con- 
venience for drawing the water from the cisterns, but every one 
carries his or her own rope and plunges their bucket down into 
the water. I did not learn if there is any law requiring them 
to keep their buckets clean, but if there is such a law and my 
eyes did not deceive me, I fancy it is not being very rigidly en- 
forced. I made an effort one morning before breakfast to go 
up an alley out of which scores of water carriers were coming 
into St. Mark's square, to see where they got their supply, but 
a policeman or officer of some kind barred the way and refused 
to let me go in there. 

Ice throughout Italy is a luxury not given you except as an 
extra, to be paid for the same as your washing, yet^the way in 
which these Americans pile it into their glasses makes the wait- 
ers stare. I see the citizens sipping it in front of the cafes as a 
Dutchman does his lager beer. I have not been able to learn 
where it is procured. I find much difficulty in picking up little 
bits of information I would like to have on account of not being 
up in the Italian language. 

To-morrmv, at one o'clock, we will leave for Florence, and 
there have a big dose of churches and picture galleries. I 
think I will worry the shop keepers. They have cheated me 
so far and I want to get even with them. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 8 1 



LETTER XII. 



A good-bye to Venice— A member of the party captured by a Countess— The 
Journey to Florence— Sights in that City— Beautiful Mosaics— A queer Hotel 
—Michael Angelo's house and relics— Scarcity of water — Railroad dining 
rooms— America ahead— Arrival at Rome— Superb Hotel Costanzi— Talk about 
victualing. 

Rome, Italy, July 31, 1879. 

I must return to Venice to say good-bye to that delightful 
place. It is only since we left there that I learned fully how 
happy our party were while there and the amount of real enjoy- 
ment they experienced, especially in the moonlight rides up 
and down the Grand Canal. A fair was in progress at the only 
garden facing this canal, which had a rare look of enchantment 
about it. The booths are tastefully arranged and the place was 
ablaze with lights, bright-colored flags and brighter-eyed Italian 
women. Many of our young men spent their evenings in the 
place and courted and flirted with the vendors of wares. We 
fear some of them left their hearts in Venice. We were told 
the citizens in charge of the fair all belonged to the nobility, 
and every lady who sold you trinkets for four times their value, 
as they often do at home, was a Countess or a Princess. Two 
of our best looking boys, the very next day after our arrival, 
visited the Palace of a couple of these fair ones and are punish- 
ing us with details of their experience. One of them has gone 
1 1 



&2 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

clean daft, and when he draws out a cabinet sized picture of 
Countess So-and-So, and looks at it and smiles his sickly smile 
upon it, we all feel sorry for him and hope he may soon recover. 
We try to destroy the effect of his romantic visions by declaring 
we saw T the girl's mother selling garlic at the corner of the 
Doge's Palace in St. Mark Square, while she, herself, was going 
about, barefooted and bareheaded, carrying water for the day's 
consumption at home. Oh, moon-light and love in Venice ! 

The gondolas having taken the seventy-four and our pile of 
baggage to the depot, we left Venice at I p. m. Tuesday, for 
Florence, at which place we arrived at 1 1 o'clock, in time to 
wind up a dinner as the bells were striking the hour of mid- 
night. So you see we dine at fashionable hours, now and then, 
on the continent. The day was warm, the road dusty, and if 
the monotony had not been relieved by the towns and cities on 
the way, and a run through the cool air, and grand scenery of 
the Appenines to close the day, the ride would have been a 
hard one. They put us in a large hotel, named after the father 
of our own country, on the broad street facing the Arno, and 
we were stowed away and rooms to spare. I never saw so 
many crooked and intricate passages in a house in my life. At 
first it seemed as though I would want a pilot and two guides 
to conduct me to and from my room, but I made a plan of my 
route, with all the crooks and turns and distances from point to 
point, and by studying it carefully, was able to make the trip 
after the tenth attempt. No one but a porter who had served 
an apprenticeship of a life time would be able to find all the 
rooms before getting lost himself. The dining room is on the 
second floor, and the bed rooms are numbered from the one 
above to the top. I was put on the second floor, or, in other 
words, in the fourth story. 

Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour at which we dined, 
we could not resist the temptation to stroll out in front of our 
hotel, seat ourselves on the stone wall separating the street from 
the river, smoke our cigars, gossip and gaze at the moonlight 
sparkling and dancing on the quiet surface of the Arno. The 
ladies came to their windows to enjoy the scene, and as they 
stood there chatting to us many a poetical fellow was reminded 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 83 

of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, and had to give us a 
dramatic touch of it. The day after our arrival in Florence we 
spent in driving round to see the sights, winding up at three 
o'clock with the famous Ufizzi and Pitti galleries, and having seen 
the great Cathedal whose dome is higher than that of St. Paul's 
or St. Peter's, and gone through the residence of Michael An- 
gelo where we were shown a large number of things connected 
with that gentleman of whom we have heard so much since our 
arrival in Europe, including many of his original plans and 
specifications of the buildings claimed to have been designed 
by him. He seems to have been a departure from the common 
saying "Jack of all trades and good at none," for we can bare- 
ly escape the belief that he was good in painting, sculpture and 
architecture. 

But after all, the big things to see in Florence and the acres 
of paintings in the galleries, and the fields of costly tapestry 
that have dilated the eyes of so many pilgrims, I think that 
which most captivated the ladies were the lovely displays of 
Florentine mosaics in the shop windows. How much of this 
jewelry our party carried away I am not able to guess. I 
think this is the only thing that made them forget the snubbing 
they got at Venice, where, after having been shown the house 
in which Ftyron lived on the Grand Canal, we were taken to a 
Monastery on one of the outlying islands where he studied the 
Armenian language, and the ladies refused admission while the 
gentlemen were allowed to enter and see his room and all the 
relics connected with the talented poet. The day may come 
when a better reason for this discrimination against the fair sex 
may be developed, but my belief now is that if some of our 
ladies could have got hold of the meek looking monk who bow- 
ed them to the left, they would have made him think there were 
six earthquakes in full progress in the immediate vicinity. 

We left Florence and her elegantly paved streets at half past 
eight o'clock in the morning, and were whirled through an un- 
inviting country till near five o'clock that afternoon. The rail- 
road runs for a long distance along the river Tiber after leaving 
the Arno, but the valleys are quite poor, and the parched and 
clayey hill-sides give but little sign of vegetation. The entire 



84 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

ride to Rome is without interest, and in our case was burden- 
some, for we suffered from dust and heat to an extent not ex- 
perienced heretofore. We were in such dire distress from 
these that even the idea we were nearing the Eternal City 
could not inspire us with enthusiasm ; and when, at last, the 
locomotive blew a long blast with its peculiar sharp whistle, 
and we looked out of the windows and saw the church spires, 
and finally the great wall surrounding the place, we heard no 
shout go up from the parched and jaded pilgrims in our van. 
But when we were driven into the court-yard of the superb 
Hotel Costanzi — second to only one or to others in all Europe — 
and were conducted to the pleasant rooms already assigned to 
us, there was a grateful sigh of relief it would not, probably, 
have been well for the landlord to see as he may have felt 
authorized to remit some item from his ordinary bill of fare. 
We partook of a good and early dinner at 6 o'clock, after which 
we assembled in the parlor and were met by Mr. Russell 
Forbes, a historian of Rome, who is to take charge of and con- 
duct us while here. He gave us a very pleasant talk of half an 
hour in regard to what we would see and how we must act 
during our stay, and read the programme for to-morrow, which 
seems to be an extensive one. We are quartered now for four 
days, and the indications are that we will be given a good op- 
portunity to see, hurriedly though it may be, the principal 
novel and attractive features of Rome. Some few went out for 
an evening drive, but the greater number sought rest and 
slumber at an early hour. 

There is one thing always scarce and hard to find in traveling 
by rail on the Continent, and that is water The railroads 
make no provision for it whatever, either on the cars or at the 
stations, and we Americans, who almost always seem to be 
thirsty, have hard work in getting water. This may arise from 
inability to make ourselves understood, but it seems to me this 
is one of the chief defects of the railroad system in this country. 
Now and then, at the stations, some enterprising chap will be 
on hand with a waiter and a few glasses of water containing 
homoeopathic doses of ice, and these he disposes of in a twink- 
ling at a compensation of two 01 four cents per glass. In this 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 85 

respect we are far ahead of the Europeans. We excel them 
also in the matter of our railroad dining rooms and lunch 
counters. Neither in G.reat Britain, Germany or Italy do they 
have much in the way of refreshments at stations, and I have 
yet to see the place where one is given time to eat a square 
meal, even if he were fortunate enough to have it placed before 
him. Mark Twain says (and I quote him so often because I 
think his Innocents Abroad the finest book of humor, and 
travel, too, for that matter, in the English language) that in 
France they have oceans of time in which to dine at railroad 
eatinghouses ; and he has two pictures showing the superiority 
of the French, in that respect, over Americans. I presume, 
of course, he meant his comparison to extend no farther than 
France, and not yet having been there can't take issue with him. 
But so far as the countries which I have already gone through are 
concerned, our own country beats them all hollow. Why, I 
have gone into their dining-rooms marked first-class, and 
danced, and gestured, and sputtered about, and got into a 
sweat and at last come out without getting a bite to eat. When 
you enter, your vision falls upon a table covered with empty 
dishes and a side table with a few joints — they persist in calling- 
all cold meats "joints" — and a few round rolls that are so tough 
that by the time you could get a bite out of one, masticate -and 
swallow it, their confounded old dinner bell would summon you 
to take your seat in the cars. 

And while on this subject I might as well add that the hotels 
of Europe can not, in the matter of their .table, at all compare 
to ours. They give you a deuce of a big dose of plates, and 
waiters with broad-cloth and swallow-tail coats, who are eter- 
nally sticking the high-priced wine list under your nose, but 
after an hour's eating, and gettting hungry between courses, 
you get up longing for one good, honest, satisfactory dinner 
such as you could get in any first-class hotel in the United 
States. They have no water-coolers or other vessels where 
water is kept to quench the thirst of their guests, except in bot- 
tles on the wash-stands in the bed-rooms, and you have no rea- 
son to think that has not been there for weeks. If you ring 
and order fresh water and some ice to make the stuff tolerable 



86 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN 's 

it comes after you have given it up in despair and made your 
will; and when you settle, it is in big figures in the bill. In 
Venice they favored us with ice in our water at dinner, and 
when we were getting ready to put foot in the gondolas for our 
departure they presented a miserable account of 75 centimes 
each for the privilege of cooling our stomachs. They have so 
little to do with ice they rarely learn the English pronunciation 
of it; and when at Venice we ordered a bowl-full and some 
sugar to compound a lemonade, the dunderhead of a waiter 
brought up two big sheets of blotting paper Here in this fine 
hotel which I have already told you is second to only one or 
two in all Eprope, they try many of their articles in tallow 
instead of lard, and yesterday in endeavoring to make a feast off 
some cakes and crackers we had purchased in Florence, we 
found them so impregnated with tallow that we laid most of 
them aside for the next beggar we should see. In Great Brit- 
ain, Holland and Germany we had good meats, but never a 
great variety, and everywhere the coffee has been tip-top. 
Butter is never seen at dinner, coffee and tea are extra, and, if 
ordered, are charged to your room, while vegetables are poor 
in variety and worse in quality. The bed-rooms are nearly 
always comfortable and the beds clean. 

Ir t Germany they tried to prop us up in bed with an im- 
mense wedge-shaped bolster and a colossal pillow, and to cover 
us with a juvenile feather bed, that if laid in the centre would 
leave both ends sticking out, but we generally piled all these on 
the floor, which gave the room the appearance of initiatory steps 
towards a family moving. I presume that on account of the 
great size of our party, we meet difficulties, and especielly at 
railroad stations, not experienced by the single traveler, but I 
think I may safely say that one can travel much more comfort- 
ably and luxuriously on the main thoroughfares of the United 
States than he can in Europe, taking the part I have seen as a 
sample of the whole. Possibly, if I were alone, or with only 
three or four others, and understood and could speak the lan- 
guage of the countries through which 1 passed, I might give a 
different verdict. Still I hardly think I would. But hotel fare 
is much cheaper in Europe than it is in America, their system 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 



87 



of serving guests being much more economical. But to-mor- 
row morning the carriages will drive into the court to take us on 
a tour through the city, and I must bid you good-bye for the 
present. I fear I shall not be able to say much about Rome. 
The theme is too big a one, even if it had not already been 
exhausted. 




THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 



LETTER XIII. 



Ronie — The Author floored— Fonner impre^ - —Inability to 

the ".Jreai City in one or two letters — A diary of one 'lay's doings— - 
Roman and the Old Masters - The tomb of the wife of Crosus— A visit to tb»- 
Cataeombs. St. Peters, the Vatican and other notable plae*-s-»arryi- ^ 
Corpses o: ess usehold. 

Rome. Italy. August 5, 187 

The last letter I wrote you brought our trip up to this place, 
and I think it would be just as well, perhaps, if I would 
pass on to the next city and say nothing of this. I find some 
difficulty in writing a letter about Rome. There would be no 
difficulty in writing a dozen, but it is no easy task to write one. 
Still, every one who reads at all has heard of the great church 

St Peter s, the Vatican, the Roman Forum, the Colosseum. 
the Catacombs, the Appian Way. the Pantheon, the Acqueduct. 
and the hundred and one other objects of interest clustered in 
and about the Eternal City, and no letter about them could go 
over untrodden ground. But I find that all reading about 
these have beer, of small service in conveying a proper concep- 
tion of them to the mind. I think a person might read even- 
letter and every book ever written about Rome and its won 
and still have an indefinite, or erroneous, idea of them as they 
actually exist. I had read and read again of the immensity and 
magnificence of St. Peter s, and had seen the figures designating 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 89 

its size, and thought I was fully prepared to look upon it, but 
when I entered its great door, and walked halfway up its main 
aisle, I stopped and stood speechless with amazement, fully 
realizing, at once, the poverty of human language to impress 
what was before and around me upon those far away. 

It is an easy matter to tell that the little cherubs we see 
sculptured low down on the columns of handsome marble, make 
dwarfs of tail men who walk and stand beside them; that the 
tiny doves just above them and which look smaller than your 
hand, are over two feet in length ; that the pen in the hand of a 
Saint over one of the altars, and which appears to be only an 
ordinary goose quill, is actually seven feet long ; that the top 
of the cross surmounting the elaborate tomb of St. Peter, in 
the centre of the Church and just under the dome, and which 
looks but little taller than the ceiling in an ordinary American 
church, is actually so high that it would take a shot-gun of 
good capacity to knock a tough squirrel from it; I say it is easy 
to tell these things and it is easy to read about them, but form- 
ing a proper idea of them without the aid of one's own vision 
is another matter entirely. It requires no great amount of 
talent to go into St. Paul's — decidedly the finest church, inside, 
about the city — and see the immense altars there, composed, in 
large part, of malachite, lapis luzuli, jasper and amethyst, or to 
gaze upon the rows of portraits of all the Popes, from the found- 
ation of the Church, in mosaic, and each of which required the 
labor of a skillful artist a whole year to execute; and it is only a 
little tiresome walk over acres of many colored and beautiful 
marble slabs that compose the floor of this gorgeous church, 
and to look up and around the vast columns of solid and un- 
broken marble from almost every rich quarry on the globe, 
while the diamonds in many of the eyes of the portraits high up 
on the walls are sparkling down upon you ; it does not now 
throw one into a perspiration to write about going down into 
the catacombs and telling of a tramp through half a mile or so 
of the fifty or more miles of damp and tortuous passages be- 
tween the tiers of tombs of Romans, who died some hundreds 
of years ago, or to recount what a feeling of awe takes posses- 
sion of one as he elbows and edges about in the subterranean 
12 



gO THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

aisles and grottoes, and gropes his way around sharp corners 
and over the uneven floors of these honey-combed charnel 
houses in mortal fear that he may stray away from the guides 
and be forever lost to the world and home ; it is no burden to 
talk of the Colosseum, and to say, in cold figures, how large it 
is and how many people it would seat ; and it is easier to grow 
mad over the contemplation of the scenes once enacted within 
the arena before the 90,000 blood-thirsty spectators, and to feel 
like going out and chopping off the head of some villainous look- 
ing modern Roman. I say, again, it is easy to do these things, 
but it is not possible to bring home to those who have not 
themselves been here, a realization of the grandeur of that which 
is to be seen in and about Rome, or the feelings which take 
possession of one as he passes about among the monuments of 
a once mighty empire. He can see the Roman Forum and 
have pointed out to him the place where Caesar fell, but he can 
not describe the effect these have upon him. And it is for 
these reasons I shall devote but one letter to Rome. 

The first day after our arrival we spent sight seeing, using 
carriages to transport us from point to point. The day was 
warm and reminded me of the climate at Vicksburg. We cross- 
ed the Tiber by the bridge of St. Angelo, having first driven to 
an eminence overlooking and giving us a good panoramic view 
of the city. This bridge, they tell us, is the finest in the city, 
and was built by Hadrian about A. D 130. Near by is Castle 
St. Angelo, originally Hadrian's tomb, but converted into a 
fortress twelve hundred years ago. What in the name of com- 
mon sense they wanted to box up old Hadrian in such a big 
pile of stone and mortar as this is I can't conceive. Why, it is 
big enough for the remains of thousands of dead men. The 
bones of the 11,000 virgins in the Cathedral at Cologne would 
not make a respectable pile in one corner of it. 

Inside of St.' Peter's we gawked about dumbfounded, heard 
the exquisite singing of the choir and the seventy odd priests 
within the railing near the center of the church, and wondered 
to find no other seats or places of worship for the people. The 
place seems to be taken entirely by fat, sleek, rather good look- 
ing priests, and the impious are impressed with the idea that 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 9 1 

this magnificent structure is more for the adoration of the 
Popes than to the glorification of the Creator. Pope this and 
Saint that crop into prominence all over the church, and a vis- 
itor can not avoid the suspicion they are the objects of worship. 
From St. Peter's we passed into the Vatican, and went hur- 
riedly through some of the galleries and museums, seeing, of 
course, the works of the old masters, but being too much of 
savages to appreciate them as good judges of art might. I have 
so often in this trip regretted that I am not intelligent enough 
to take a fancy to the great works which are being continually 
trotted out for us to see. There is no subterfuge that I can 
resort to that enables me to escape the infliction of being bored 
over a work of some of the old masters, unless, indeed, I feign 
sickness and stay at home. I despise their daubs, with a few 
exceptions. The truth of the whole matter is, they selected 
impossible subjects, in the first place, and perhaps had worse 
living ones for their models. I know it is wicked for me to har- 
bor the idea that probably the old Roman matron was not a 
noble looking woman, but, on the contrary, was as homely as 
the present dwellers in Rome, but I can't help it. I think it 
not at all beyond the possibilities that the works of our own 
Fennimore Cooper and that other prolific writer of thrilling In- 
dian novels, whose cognomen does not drop from my pen just at 
the present moment, may escape fire and flood and be handed 
down to far off generations and read as the chronicles of the 
present time. If they should be, then what of the beautiful In- 
dian maiden I have sought among so many tribes of the far 
West to see without being rewarded for my labor ? Why, she 
Avill be regarded as a beauty who bewitched and ran men crazy 
with her loveliness. 

But I am stragglirrg. At the Vatican we passed into one 
room and, as if by concert, there arose the exclamation of "how 
beautiful !" as the bright, life-like pictures greeted our eyes. A 
shade of disgust passed over the face of our conductor. He 
hurried us out of the room with the remark that these pictures 
all represented some dogma of the Church, and as modern pic- 
tures, were very good, but of not sufficient interest to justify any 
loss of time over them. Mr. Forbes is an intelligent gentle- 



92 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

man, who has lived in Rome several years, and made its an- 
tiquities his study, and who has aided in the recent discoveries 
of several catacombs, and translated and written a great deal, 
but I fear that he sees beauties in things more from the fact that 
they look old and rusty than because they are actually hand- 
some. And I suspect he would sooner go into raptures over 
the proboscis of some idol made just after Adam's time, and 
baked and dried in the burning sun of Egypt, than he would 
over the most symmetrical nose of any handsome lady in our 
entire party. Now that's art, and the common herd don't pos- 
sess it — at least all Americans who have independence enough 
to be their own judges are devoid of it. 

We took lunch between noon and I o'clock and rested till 3 
o'clock. To give you an idea of the amount of labor we per- 
form, I will quote from the diary of my room-mate, covering 
the rounds for the balance of the day : 

"Left the hotel again at three o'clock, passing through the 
Corso, by the new Postoffice, to the Theater of Marcellus, the 
second stone theater in Rome, built by Augustus, son of Julius 
Caesar, and finished by Augustus' son, Marcellus, in the first 
century. It is in the shape of the letter D, and accommodated 
40,000 people. Thence to the Temple of Vesta, or Hercules, 
a circular building supported by twenty Corinthian columns, 
thirty two feet in height and built in the time of Vespasian. 
Next, to the pyramid of Caius Cestius, containing his remains. 
It is 116 feet high by 98 feet square at the base, built of brick 
by Pontius Mila and the freedman Polhus. Thence we drove 
quite a distance outside the city walls to St. Paul's, which was 
burned in 1823, and restored in the most expensive manner by 
Pope Pius IX. It contains a few fine paintings and mosaics, 
and the pictures of all the Popes in circular frames five feet in 
diameter. These pictures are all mosaic, and a number of them 
have diamond eyes. There are eighty massive Corinthian col- 
umns which form the nave, all of solid marble. The whole 
church is of the most expensive marble, polished so highly as 
to reflect like a mirror. The painted glass windows are the 
finest I ever saw. The principal entrance, toward the Tiber, is 
unfinished. On that end, outside, is an immense mosaic pic- 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 93 

ture made by the Vatican man u factors, and which consumed 
fifteen years in making. St. Paul's remains are in a tomb in the 
transept. This is far the finest church of its size in the world. 
Thence through the Porto St. Paolo to the house of Rienzi, 
passing the Hill of Remeli and the Temple of Patrician on the 
site of the Forum of cattle dealers, and walking up to the 
stone bridge across the Tiber, built 150 B. C, and the 
first stone bridge in Rome. Below we saw the mouth of the 
great drain of Rome and the remains of the wooden bridge, and 
above the Sacred Island of the Tiber, and connected to the 
main land by two bridges built 100 years B. C. Thence through 
the Jew's quarter to the "hired house" of St. Paul, where that 
Apostle lived ; to the Pantheon, or Temple of All Gods, a large 
circular edifice, formerly used as a bath or sweating chamber. 
A circular, open space, 27 feet in diameter, in the center of the 
roof is the only opening for light in this large building. The 
tombs of Raphael and Victor Emanuel are in this building. 
Thence to the hotel, passing the King's Palace." 

My young friend, who keeps a full record of all the statistics 
of this trip, after dinner (and that means in this country, to us, 
anywhere between six o'clock and midnight) went out with 
some ladies to see the Colosseum by moonlight, drove home by 
the Corso, stopping at a cafe on the way to take "some ices," 
as he has it in his notes. And in this way I show you how busy 
we are. 

You have often heard of Croesus. You, perhaps, never saw 
that wealthy gentleman, and, perhaps never will, but you can 
see the tomb of his wife outside the citv on the Appian way. 
They called her Cecilia Metella, and encased her in this immense 
tower about 100 B. C. The thing is large enough to hold the 
remains of a regiment. Out on this famous highway we also 
saw the buildings, dug deep down into the earth and walled up 
like a cellar, and reaching a roof twenty feet above ground with- 
out any intervening floor, where, in niches in the wall, were 
placed the urns containing the ashes of the members of Caesar's 
numerous household. There are three of these buildings, and 
the one we went down into, by means of stone steps, was capable 
of accommodating eight hundred urns without crowding. Two 



94 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

of these urns contained some ashes, said to be of those cremated 
bodies, and our party carried most of them off. It was a con- 
venient way of transporting corpses. 

But I must bid Rome good-bye for the present. To-morrow 
night or the next morning, we go down to Naples, Vesuvius 
and Pompeii. I want to visit Pompeii and see the home of 
Glaucus and the house of Diomed, and perhaps the ground over 
which Bulwer made the blind girl, Nydia, lead Glaucus and the 
queenly lone through darkness, fire and raining ashes to safety, 
on the seashore and love and happiness beyond. And I want 
to look over the water into which that faithful, but heart-broken 
little guide sought oblivion from the pangs of unrequited love 
by casting herself beneath the sea. Having done this, I think I 
will be enabled to endure the fleas of Rome, and tramp through 
her narrow, dirty, crooked streets with greater composure. 






TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 95 



LETTER XIV. 



More of Rome and its big sights— Trying to have pictures taken in the Roman 
Forum— Our Guide in the Eternal City— Run to Naples— First view of Vesu- 
vius—Naples not a clean city — The beautiful Bay— Cheapness of everything 
—Noisy place -Odd vehicles— Mosquitoes and Smudges — Preparing for a 
midnight tramp to the summit of Vesuvius. 

Naples, Italy, August 7th, 1879. 

The day subsequent to the date of my last letter from Rome, 
we spent in that interesting city seeing all the sights we could 
in that time. The sun shone pretty warm, and we suffered from 
heat, especially while hanging about the Roman Forum, look- 
ing at the remains of noted temples and other buildings cluster- 
ed thickly about it, and listening to our conductor air his knowl- 
edge of these places. And we absolutely boiled while about 
one half the party stood for their picture in a group in the 
parching rays of the sun. I presume when we get home and 
our friends see our blurred faces with the remaining columns of 
the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the back ground, they will 
feel we have done something wonderful indeed. If they don't 
feel so, we will never be repaid for our being cooked alive. 

We did not see where Caesar fell — for he did not fall in the 
Roman Forum, but at another fellow's house, a mile away, and 



g6 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

was brought and laid out here — but we saw the spot where his 
dead body lay when Mark Antony made the speech mentioned 
by many ancient historians and put in words by Mr. Shaks- 
peare. From the Roman Forum we went to the Palatine Hill, 
and did up the ancient edifices there, including the Palace of 
the Caesars, Farnese Gardens, Baths of Livia, Palaces of Caligu- 
la, Tiberius and Flaii, and divers other points made famous by 
history. Of course we saw the room set apart as the one in 
which Caligula stabled his famous horse and fed him on oats 
gilded in gold, but Mr. Forbes wouldn't swear to it. But we 
find Mr. Forbes a very poor guide in one or two respects. For 
one thing, he has small faith, and he even turns up his nose at 
many favorite traditions. He don't believe in the twenty kegs 
of nails from the true cross, or that Saint So and So is buried in 
three or four different places. He will deliberately show us the 
foot prints of some noted chap or the dent of his head where it 
was bumped against some stone, and then in cold blood show 
us that, for mam' reasons, it is all a hoax — such as that the fel- 
low was never in those parts and consequently he couldn't have 
imprinted any stones in that locality. This is not exactly right. 
We want to be astounded, and when this delver after hidden 
lore trots in his unromantic notions and brushes away so many 
pet theories, we feel that we ought to have a guide not so well 
down to hard fact. It must be understood that Mr. Forbes 
only conducts the sections in Rome. While he is a very clever 
gentleman and very thorough in his knowledge of the city and 
its surroundings, he will not dose us with miracles or allow oth- 
ers to do so without his protest. 

It having been left discretionary whether we should travel by 
night or by day from R.ome to this place, about twenty of us took 
the cars at 1 1 o'clock p. M. and ran through that night, thus 
avoiding the heat and dust of the day. Just as the sun was 
peeping over the mountains and glinting the low range to the 
right of us, we looked out the car window and, for the first time, 
saw the small column of smoke issuing from the top of Vesuvius 
and drifting lazily before a gentle breeze out to sea. It did not 
strike us as a grand sight and yet it impressed us as an interesting 
one, The column was never broken, but steady and regular as 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. g? 

though the fireman below did his work without any fitful inter- 
ludes of rest or slumber. So near did the mountain appear to 
us that we felt it necessary to adjust our baggage and our hair 
so we might be ready to get out in order at the depot, and for 
this purpose aroused two or three sleepers for whom the cry of 
"Vesuvius" had no electric effect, but it was full two hours 
when we came fully abreast of the mountain and passed into the 
city. 

As our tired pprty sat in and on top of the omnibusses wait- 
ing the slow action of the railroad men in delivering the few 
trunks brought along, we were discovered by some boys who 
were out early, and who gathered around us, and good-humor- 
edly sought alms, indicating by various signs that they were in 
want of a breakfast. We did not dare to pitch them a copper, 
for had we done so, our peace would have been gone for all of 
our stay in Naples. Some one tried that when passing through 
the Jews' quarter in Rome, and a pack of boys and girls chased 
us for half a mile, and would bounce out after us whenever they 
caught sight of us afterwards. I said we waited for the bag- 
gage at the depot. That usually goes ahead of us, and is in 
charge of our sub-conductor, but being ahead of the programme, 
and for the first time under the baggage man, we had to wait 
for all baggage we had brought down for the entire section. 
Most of it we left at Rome to await our return. 

If we had seen no more, the ride from the depot to the hotel 
was sufficient to convince us that Naples is not a clean city. I 
don't think, now that I have been here two days, that I have 
seen a more dirty one. That street which runs the whole 
length of the half circle or more in front of the bay for a dist- 
ance of over ten miles, is especially unclean, and some of the 
narrow alleys leading into it, and which seem to be absolutely 
swarming with human beings, are filthy in a superlative degree. 
In the afternoon when the sun has passed behind the houses 
and tall bluffs fronting the bay, the place becomes crowded with 
dirty women and children, who seek light and air by teeming 
out of their dirty and filthy dens into the open street. Many 
of the children are half naked, and some of them quite so, thus 
making them no cheerful sight to see. And I have never 

13 



9§ THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

heard so much noise as I have heard in Naples. It seems that 
some one is yelling all the time. Midnight brings no relief 
from this nuisance. Sometimes some vendor of fruit passing 
under my window screams out in such an unearthly manner that 
I fancy, on the spur of the moment, some one is murdering 
him, and on going to the window I am sorry it is only a fancy. 
The organ grinders have besieged our hotel and, at meal times 
especially, have nearly ground us into fits. The first time they did 
this we unfortunately sent out a deputation to buy them off and 
send them away. Now they suddenly start up at every corner 
of the hotel and have become too much for us. We may have 
to kill one before we get any peace. Yesterday we were all 
badly shocked by a pack of boys with no other garments than 
shirts on, turning handsprings and standing on their heads in 
front of our hotel. What other indignity we may expect be- 
fore we leave I can not tell. 

We find most things very cheap in Naples. A short cab 
drive in the city costs ten cents for two — street car fare two 
cents a bare seat, and three cents for one with cushions. Coral 
jewelry and shell cameos are in great abundance and low in 
price. Bath houses in the bay furnish you with a bathing gar- 
ment very short at both ends, two towels as large as a sheet for 
a single bed, and a room in which to disrobe, all for the modest 
sum of ten cents. One can get a first class shine to his boots 
for the insignificant price or two cents, and he can buy fruit 
enough to gorge three persons for ten or fifteen cen^ts. 

They have mosquitoes here, and they have them in abund- 
ance ; yet the hotels make no provision in the way of bars to 
keep them from feasting off Americans. Last night they came 
near finishing me. The chambermaid gave me two saucers con- 
taining a vile compound to burn as a ''smudge," and with which 
I nearly suffocated myself trying to rid the room of pests, but 
I think if old Vesuvius herself had been vomiting her sulphur- 
ous smoke right in at my window, I would have furnished steak 
for hungry mosquitoes all the same. When I look at these 
brown, dirty, sour, thick-skinned Italians, whom we meet upon 
the streets, I do not wonder that a mosquito should risk his 
life and wade through fire and smoke to get a nibble at an 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 99 

American. Thinking that perhaps our hotel was peculiar in 
the matter of this great deficiency for the comfort of guests, we 
made diligent inquiries and found they were all alike. One 
can not buy a mosquito bar in Naples. 

I wish I could describe some of the outlanaish vehicles they 
use here in Italy, especially the carts upon which nearly every- 
thing is transported. It would be better than anything else, 
perhaps, to illustrate what miserable, ignorant human beings 
these people are, and how small progress in some things they 
have made since the flood. But I shall not attempt to do it. 
I have nearly run my legs off in search of photographs of them 
without success. I can always, everywhere, find pictures of 
castles, palaces, parks, big churches and stunning places, but 
when I look for those which will illustrate the character of their 
odd streets, their fantastic surroundings and such things as 
would somewhat show their mode of living and doing business, 
I can not find them. I would give more for a view looking up 
one of the dark, dirty, narrow streets intersecting the broad 
one facing the bay, or for the clumsy and murderous cart drawn 
by three small, patient, ill-used donkeys, than I would for the 
entire catalogue of those of the bay, or of Vesuvius sending up 
fire and smoke in the distance. 

If one had not been in Naples and seen the poverty and dirt 
of her half million of people, or smeiled the awful smells which 
run riot on the streets facing the bay, and which are open to air 
and sunshine ; and had not heard the yells and noise and 
screeches that have no cessation, morning, noon or night, and 
which would make Bedlam appear a quiet place ; or had not 
seen the inhuman drivers of vehicles pounding their faithful and 
tractable ponies and donkies over the head, or trying to crack 
their eyes out with clumsy whips, I think a sight of the Bay of 
Naples would strike him as being as lovely a sight as he has 
ever seen, I can understand the gorgeous descriptions of those 
who approach the city from the sea, and who write under the 
inspiration of such a view, unaffected by the scenes which meet 
them on putting their feet upon its wharf. But if any one 
should enter Naples'and see what I have 1 recounted and then 
go into gush about the city, I should set him down on the spot 



IOO THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

as a hopeless idiot. Some fellow once wrote "see Naples and 
die." My honest conviction is that if he be an ordinary tidy 
person, with his senses of sight and smell and hearing in good 
order, and sees Naples in August thoroughly, he will obey the 
injunction in less than two weeks, and be as hopeless a corpse as 
though he had jumped into the crater at Vesuvius. But a sea- 
sick person, gliding into the quiet, blue waters of the bay as it 
was sparkling and quivering in the moonlight, and seeing the 
long crescent of houses and lights before him, as his own stom- 
ach was clearing up from the effects of a long voyage in a stink- 
ing ship, would be justified in an attack of enthusiasm, and my 
advice to him would be to cast anchor and never enter the city 
at all. Then he could return to his native land with pleasant 
recollections of it. 

It is now midnight. The noise in the streets below is greater, 
if possible, than ever. I occupy a corner room, each of the 
two sides facing other hotels across the way. Both of them are 
ablaze with light. In the parlor of one six ladies and gentle- 
men are at a game of cards, while a big mouthed Italian, with 
strong lungs and great endurance, is singing at the top of his 
voice and pounding away at an ancient piano. In the corner 
room of the other hotel, and on a level with mine, by the win- 
dow, sits a middle aged lady with no greater amount of attire 
than the urchins who stood upon their heads in front of out- 
hotel, fanning herself and enjoying the smells and melodies that 
are stealing upon the night air. The streets are narrow, and 
yet this Italian lady seems to have no concern that she is being 
gazed upon by a gentleman from America. The mosquitoes 
have come in and gathered upon the walls or are innocently 
humming about the room waiting for me to blow out the lights 
and go to bed. But I am going to disappoint them to-night 
Most of our party are going to Vesuvius, and I hear the car- 
riages driving up to the door. I look out my window and just 
where the moon came up over the mountair s three hours ago, 
I see a red beacon in the heavens with its light dim, and brighter 
by turns, and I know that is uneasy Vesuvius, the cinders and 
ashes from whose troubled stomach buried Pompeii and several 
adjoining towns just eighteen hundred years ago. I am very 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. IOI 

tired and more sleepy, and they tell me it is an awful pull, but I 
want to go there, and I hope I won't fall by the wayside as 
many have done before. Yet two nights without slumber in this 
hot clime, hard work during the day, winding up with an ex- 
hausting climb up Vesuvius, may be more than I can endure, 
and I will not predict the result. There is a loud call upon 
stragglers from our conductor from below, so I bid you good- 
night. 






102 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 



LETTER XV. 



Night ride to Vesuvius— The carriages- -Strange night scenes— Guides and Ponies 
—The Hermitage -Bedlam broke loose— Climbing to the summit— Some of 
the party brean down and are boosted up the ascent by the rabble guides- 
Down into the bowl of the crater, and lighted our cigars at the brimstone 
tires-Return to the hotel well tagged out— Rest two hours and start lor 
Pompeii— The Exhumed City and what we s,rv there— The buildings that are 
being uncovered— The paintings a/id now they hold their colors -Licentious- 
ness of these ancients— Their valgar pictures closed against lady visitors- 
Shameful symbols on the houses— The house of Glaucus— Rude mills, ovens, 
bread, etc.- Excursion to the island of Capri, Sorrenti, and the Blue Grotto- 
Return to Rome— Seethe tiueen but miss the Pope— More of Rome hereafter. 

Rome, Italy, August 9, 1879. 

I closed my' last letter to you at Naples, a little after mid- 
night, to take a seat with the driver of one of the twelve car- 
riages that were to convey the greater number of our party to 
the hermitage about half way, in elevation, up Vesuvius. 
These carriages were all with folding tops, holding five persons, 
one with the driver and four inside, and drawn by three horses 
abreast, the third one being only for this drive and hitched by a 
movable arrangement alongside the near horse. This drive 
lasted three hours and a half, being about equally divided be- 
tween the journey through the long city of Naples and the as- 
cent of the mountain. The ascent begins near the eastern ter- 
minus of the city and before you pass out of it. The moon was 
a little past the full, and the sky was unbroken even by a cloud 
as big as your hand. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. IO3 

About a half a mile or more before leaving the city we came 
to the headquarters for guides and ponies, and here experienced 
a siege I had never seen before or ever want to see again. 
It beggars description. Almost in a twinkling the streets 
swarmed with the most ill-favored and piratical looking scoun- 
drels, some with donkeys, some with staffs, some with nothing 
but their bad faces, and all noisily crowding about the carriages 
seeking to be employed. They led their animals up to the car- 
riage doors, piled their walking sticks into the vehicles, held 
out their straps for us to touch that they might then claim that 
we had engaged their services, and were persistent to a 
degree that was both laughable and annoying. Our con- 
ductor brought partial order out of the chaos by ascertaining 
who wanted animals and who wanted chairs in which to be car- 
ried up, and then engaged these, but forty others took 
after us and the whole swarm of them went whooping and yell- 
ing up the road with us, some walking, some riding, while 
others held to the tails of the animals and pounded them with 
sticks to increase their speed. To say that they kicked up a 
dust that nearly suffocated us expresses it mildly. 

The day was fairly dawning when we reached the hermitage. 
Here the carriages stop for the present, but the Government is 
at work on a road that will enable vehicles to reach the base of 
the cone. About thirty of us in all concluded to undertake the 
ascent. And here again Bedlam broke loose and continued 
until the riders were mounted, some ladies in chairs, and the 
doleful looking caravan under way. If I did Vesuvius I wanted 
to do it myself, so I was one of a very few who started out on 
foot and continued unassisted till I stood upon the summit look- 
ing down into the bowl-like conformation, and the two unequal 
peaks therein sending up their fire and smoke, and now and 
then spitting out a bushel or so of red hot lava. It was a very 
exhaustive trip of two hours duration, and very many of the 
dirty vagabonds who had stuck to us, were rewarded by being 
employed to pull and push at members of our party who had 
lost their wind and their spirits at the same time. These fel- 
lows know pretty well the capacity of the average American, 
and his readiness to call for assistance in trying times even if it 



104 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

is expensive, and when one of them swears up and down at the 
outfitting" station that he will foot it up Vesuvius or die in the at- 
tempt, they do not become discouraged, but follow on clear up 
to the crater, rarely ever reaching it without being sought to 
lend a helping hand, either to push or pull some one, to car- 
ry his surplus garments, or, perchance, make a perambulating 
wineshop of himself by carrying the numerous bottles that have 
been brought along for the stomach's sake. 

Well, every one who undertook the trip made it; went down 
into the bowl, crossed the fissures around its edge that were 
sending out their heat and sulphurous smoke, walked over the 
field of lava that had been made only eight days ago, and was 
still hot, climbed the main crater and perspired within the very 
heat of its gentle vomitings, lit our cigars, and burned the 
corners of letters at the fissures, and dug moulten lava from the 
sides of the baby crater to mould around our copper pieces, or 
to let cool for specimens to bring home. We did all these 
things and got our lungs full of vile air, and came down by a short 
and steep cut on the jump — some of us tumbling heels over 
head and nearly burying ourselves in the fine lava — and at last 
reaching our hotels near noon, so nearly worn out as to feel it 
were an accident if our bodies hung together. And yet in less 
than two hours we started for Pompeii, taking carriages to the 
depot, a long way from our hotel, and then the cars for the ex- 
humed city. 

What shall I say of Pompeii ? I am sure I do not know, I 
can state with all my reading on the subject I found the houses 
which have been uncovered in a much better state of preserva- 
tion than I had expected, and was enabled to form a clearer 
idea of the habits of its former inhabitants than I supposed 
would be possible. There are no evidences that any of these 
people lived luxuriantly, but on the contrary their rooms were 
small, poorly lighted, worse ventilated, and devoid of comfort. 
Some writers speak of them as having lived in splendor. I 
can not believe it from the well preserved things to be seen 
there. They had some bronze ornaments and marble statuary, 
but they had poor bread. Their walls were frescoed but the 
rooms were small and without windows. Their houses were 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. I05 

one story high, jammed together, with very narrow streets, 
with certainly no front yards and no indications of back ones. 
What they luxuriated in can not be seen among the relics left 
to this generation. It is true they had their public baths, and 
perhaps their private ones, and it is not a wide stretch to 
imagine they needed them. 

It is estimated that about one-third of the city has been un- 
covered, and yet only one small window of glass about sixteen 
inches in length and three in width has, so far, been discovered. 
The Government has a force at work excavating right along 
towards the mountain, and we were taken to that point and saw 
the buildings being brought to the light after a burial of just 
eighteen hundred years. It was almost startling to see how 
clear and bright they looked after this long slumber under 
ground Those old fellows had fast colors in those days, for 
many of the fresco paintings on the walls look almost as bright 
as if put on but a week ago, and after being exposed to the hot 
sun of Italy for months, and even years, retain their color in a 
remarkable degree. We had seen an evidence of this in Rome, 
in the house of Germanicus, on the Palatine Hill, adjoining the 
Palace of the Caesars, which has recently been exhumed after 
being buried twelve hundred years, the paintings upon whose 
walls were quite good and strikingly fresh and clear. And 
there was another thing those ancients understood, and that 
was the art of making mortar that would stand for ages as firm 
and strong as when first dried from the trowel of the mason. 

Still, having seen the homes of these people, their clumsy 
manner of doing things, and the many witnesses of their licen- 
tious lives, I can't admire them even though they are credited 
with intelligence and were the possessors of some arts that 
have been lost to us. Why, in Pompeii, there are houses con- 
taining so many evidences of vulgarity that even these Italians 
of the present day, who are by no means fastidious on such sub- 
jects, deem it necessary to keep closed and shut out from the 
view of ladies; and in the museum at Naples there is a room 
filled with such questionable works of art that have been found 
during excavations of this renowned city of the past, no female 
is ever permitted to enter its doors. I speak of this thing be- 
14 



I06 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

cause it is not often alluded to by writers, and because it is the 
most striking feature of the history of Pompeii handed down by 
art in paintings and bronze and sculpture, so far unearthed. 
Houses, the character of which can barely be hinted at in print, 
were designated by the most shameful symbols, prominent from 
the street, and in enduring marble that marks the tread of cen- 
turies— symbols that stand as monuments to disgust a civilized 
people. I presume writers seldom mention these things be- 
cause it would detract from the poetry of the place ; but the 
things I speak of stand out boldly in Pompeii, and one must 
pass through its streets, deserted now by aught else save liz- 
zards, with closed eyes if he does not see them. As we stood 
there, with Vesuvius frowning down upon us from the distance, 
it was an easy matter to entertain the conviction that Pompeii 
existed long enough, and that the Almighty smote it none too 
soon. 

We were shown the houses of Glaucus — they call him the 
"Tragic Poet" — of Salust, of Diomede, and other prominent 
characters in Bulwer's novels, but there was no monument to 
that loving blind girl, who rescued lone and Glaucus and the 
miserable priest from the clutches of the wily Arbaces, and at 
last led Glaucus and lone through the horrors of a ghastly day to 
the seashore. I thought of that faithful little woman often in 
my ramble through Pompeii, and when I stood in Glaucus' 
house where the flowers must have grown and blossomed under 
her gentle care, I forgot that she was an ideal character, and 
imagined where she stood and how she looked as she prepared 
the bouquet for the kindly master whom she loved so well. 

We saw the rude, clumsy mills upon which the Pompeiians 
ground their grain, standing just as they stood eighteen hundred 
years ago ; we looked into the oven which baked their bread 
and from which eighty loaves were taken cooked too brown for 
the use of those who found them so long after baking ; we saw 
their amphitheatre — a child as compared with the one at. Vero- 
na, and a mere baby by the side of the full grcwn one at Rome. 
We saw their public and private baths, their forums and temples 
of justice, their churches, and the immense well, the caving in 
of which opened a hole to light above, and led to the discovery 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. IOJ 

of the buried city. We walked over the tiled floors that are as 
smooth and bright as though cemented yesterday, and we tried 
to steal mementoes of the place, but the Italian guards were so 
thick and watched us so closely we could only carry away a few 
yards of the floor from the house of Salust. We tried to get 
away with one of the bodies which lie in state in the Museum, 
2nd which gave forth no odor after so long a burial, but it was 
too heavy for us. So we passed out the city under the archway 
that formerly led to the sea, now far away, as a grateful breeze 
came to us across the lovely expanse, of water, and took the cars 
for Naples. 

The next day a steamer was chartered, and an excursion made 
to the island of Capri, to Sorrento and the famous Blue Grotto, 
but I was too much fatigued to accompany it, and so stayed in 
Naples loafing around upon my own hook. Last night at 8 
o'clock, we left the hoteL and driving for a mile or more through 
the swarms of people on the broad street along the bay, amid 
myriads of lights and the busiest scene we have witnessed in 
Europe, we struck out through the narrow streets, and at last 
reached the depot in time for the nine o'clock train, and to bid 
Naples good-bye, Vesuvius keeping her red eye upon us till we 
were far upon our journey. Our train was an immense one, 
carrying quite a number of soldiers, and we did not reach our 
hotel in Rome till 8 o'clock this morning, after a very tiresome 
ride that would be made in America in less than half the time 
it takes these slow-going people to make it. We found the. 
fourth section here, having "done up" the city and ready to 
start for Naples in two hours. When we came here before we 
met the third section returning from Naples, and we have been 
with the first section both here and at Naples, and will remain 
with it over Sunday, when we part and none of us meet till we 
reach London on our return home. Thus we have met all of 
the three hundred Americans on this excursion except the fifth 
section, which only made a short tour no farther South than 
Switzerland. On Monday we start northward, and in three days 
will be out of Italy and in cooler quarters, passing first through 
Pisa, "Genoa and Milan. The fourth section, who have just 
come down from Switzerland, give us such glowing accounts of 



Io8 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

their enjoyment in that country, and the fun they had snow- 
balling in the Simplon pass, that we are anxious to be on that 
territory. 

We had arranged to see the Pope to-day, but it is a disap- 
pointment to learn he is indisposed and can see no one. But 
we have seen the Queen and waded through the Palace, and 
that is some compensation. Yet nearly all of us were anxious 
to see the Pope. He is the only dignitary we have had any 
anxiety to look upon. Our lovely hotel here and the good fare 
have put us all in a good humor, and we will no doubt leave 
Rome with kindlier feelings towards it than we entertain for 
Naples, even with her charming bay. 




TOUR THROUGH EUROPE, 



IO9 



LETTER XVI. 



More about Rome— The Baths of Caracalla— High Mass at St. Peter's— The Capuc- 
cini I Church and description of the Graveyard for barefooted Monks— De- 
parture from Rome— Journey to Genoa— Stay at Pisa, to see the Baptistery, 
Cathedra!, Campo Santo 4 and the Leaning Tower— Discourse upon Fleas- 
Scenery upon "the Mediterranean '[.Coast. 

Genoa, Italy, August 12, 1879. 

I fear there was an apparent contradiction in the two letters 
I wrote from Rome. Before starting for Naples I may have- 
spoken sneeringly of the Eternal City, and made some unjust 
remark about its fleas, and on retnrning I think I expressed de- 
light at getting back. Not having been to Naples when I wrote 
the first letter, and having been there when I -wrote the second, 
must account for this. After having gone to Naples and en- 
dured its stench and noise and unpleasant sights, and left there 
with our bodies all frescoed by hungry fleas, our faces set in 
Mosaic by v'ler mosquitoes, our stomachs full of tough and sour 
bread and questionable water, and made a long run, at night, 
in a train "with a regiment of soldiers whose vocation seemed to 
be to screech and yell, I think one might be pardoned for 
even liking Rome, especially if quartered in an elegant hotel. 
I doubt if we find a place during our whole tour which will 
please us less or disgust us more than did our visit to Naples, 
where so many dirty people nearly live in the streets. In our 



I IO THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

ride to Vesuvius from the hotel the pavements were lined in 
some places with slumberers like so many pigs, and as we re- 
turned we saw the inhabitants pursuing all sorts of avocations 
in narrow streets, such as washing, shoemaking, boiling roast- 
ing ears, drying maccaroni on poles, searching the heads of 
young ones for vermin, making up their black bread and leaving 
it to sour in the sunshine, and preparing their vegetables for 
cooking and leaving the parings and dirt in the street, while 
half-grown children, begrimed as though they had been drag- 
ged a day through the lava on the sides of Vesuvius, sported 
about as naked as when they unluckily came into the world. 

We spent the first day of our return to Rome in cleaning our- 
selves, and getting a rest so greatly needed by all. The next 
day, Sunday, a large party "did up" the baths of Caracalla, the 
two museums, and other places they had omitted, while many 
went to high mass and afternoon services at St. Peter's. A few 
returned to the Colosseum to gaze again upon and wonder at 
the stupendous structure, while still two or three lingered about 
the baths I have mentioned, that were once under a roof, the 
outer walls of which were just a mile in length. These baths 
are a greater curiosity to me than the Colosseum, and aside 
from any history connected with them, are far more impressive. 
They have in large part been destroyed by various Popes, who 
robbed them of their marble and statues to build and adorn 
churches that few enter except priests, pilgrims and beggars. 
We are told they actually burned the marble statues to make 
lime. And yet these people make costly pictures, in Mosaic, 
of those old vandals, and stick them up in prominent places for 
future generations to see. If the Baths of Caracalla had been 
left as they were when first discovered and cleared of the rub- 
bish caused by the crushing in of the acres of garden upon their 
roof, they would to-day be a far grander sight to see than St. 
Peters, with all her pomp and riches stolen from other inter- 
esting monuments in and about Rome. 

In the afternoon some of us went to the Capuccini Church, the 
lower portion of which is a graveyard for the barefooted monks. 
There are five rooms, or large alcoves, made entirely of the 
bones of these old fellows, and the fat chap who accompanied 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. I I 1 

us, said 7,000 monks had been buried and disjointed and strung 
up there in the four hundred years since the place was opened 
for the reception of them. The ground on the small floors is 
composed of dirt from Jerusalem, and every monk who dies de- 
sires to take his turn in it ; so when a new corpse is brought in 
they take up the one who has enjoyed the Jerusalem dirt the 
longest, and replace him with the new one, putting the disin- 
terred fellow in a niche till he is thoroughly cured, when they 
disjoint him, label his skull and pile his bones in the heaps 
which form the walls, ceilings and columns of these fantastic 
rooms. 

There was no unpleasant odor whatever in the place, albeit 
some of the ghastly monks who sat upright or reclined in the 
drying-out niches were still uncured, with the skin drawn un- 
pleasantly tight over their shrivelled faces, and tufts of hair, 
here and there, sticking to their head and jaws. Many of the 
jaws are nearly toothless through the ravages of relic hunters, 
and I confess to a slight feeling of guilt as I write with the tooth 
of a fourteen-hundred-and-niner in my pocket, given me by a 
dentist of our party after coming out. How that old fellow 
will find his tooth when Gabriel blows his horn and causes a 
rattling of dry bones in this bony place is not for me to say. I 
regard the stereoscopic view I have of one of these alcoves as 
the most valuable in my collection, because it will illustrate bet- 
ter than the words of any pen, the appearance of this wierd and 
awful place. 

Taking lunch at Rome with a good supply of maccaroni after- 
putting every one at the hotel on his oath that it was not made 
at Naples, we entered the cars and bade a last good-bye to that 
famed city and our nice hotel; and turning our faces northward, 
whirled away through the heat and dust that have all the time 
been our companions during our jaunt in Italy. As far as 
Spezia the scenery on the way is uninviting, the land poor, the 
fields and gardens parched by the heat of the sun, or actually 
burned by the fires that have swept over them, and the scenery 
tame. In passing through it one can not resist wishing it were 
night to shut out the view and the heat of the sun at the same 
time. At Spezia, however, a happy change takes place, and 



112 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 

from that point till you have driven through the long tunnel at 
Genoa, and the guard opens the door there and politely calls 
out "Genova," there is ample in the picture laid out before you 
to reward 3/011 for remaining awake and looking upon it, Here 
you have come upon the seashore, and to your right lies the 
clear, blue waters, flecked, as far as the eye can reach, with 
sailing vessels, while upon the left lie the mountains inhabited 
and cultivated to their very summits, and often running down 
to the sea in such bald and rugged spurs of solid rock that our 
train can not turn their points, but must dart through the tun- 
nels which pierce them so frequently and at such short inter- 
vals, in some parts of the journey, that one has not time to look 
at the time of day by his watch in the flashes of day-light that 
are allotted to him. There are between fifty and a hundred of 
these tunnels — I should judge nearer the latter number — some 
of them so long that you lose your patience waiting for the 
sunshine to greet you at their termini. The coast is very rug- 
ged, and no doubt a view from a ship at sea, looking inland, is 
a very fine one. 

I never saw so many houses stuck about so thickly in appa- 
rently inaccessible and impossible places as may be seen on the 
mountain sides in this ride. It is a constant matter of specula- 
tion how the inhabitants all subsist. For miles and miles the 
only thing which seems to be cultivated are the tens of thous- 
ands of olive trees that appear like forests as we speed by them. 
Nearing Genoa, we find every inch of the little valleys cultivated 
in gardens, and all these irrigated by water drawn from wells 
that exist by hundreds. Indeed, there are no crops in Italy 
which seem to thrive at all where not irrigated. 

I have just become conscious that I have jumped Pisa at a 
bound. Still, so far as the mention of the country is concerned, 
it makes no difference. We reached Pisa near 1 1 o'clock at 
night the day alter leaving Rome, and, late as it was, took a 
good tea at the excellent Hotel Minerva, near the depot, and 
went to bed in airy rooms, and surrounding ourselves with 
mosquito bars dreamed of home. The next morning taking 
carriages, we drove through the town, crossed the Arno and saw 
the objects of interest clustered together at the outskirts of 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 113 

the place — the Cathedral, Baptistery, Campo Santo and the 
Leaning Tower, all of which entertained us. The Cathedral 
has large bronze doors, is very fine inside and out, and contains, 
as you have no doubt heard, the lamp, the swinging of which, 
suggested to Galileo the idea of a pendulum. The Baptistery 
is a circular building shaped like a Humpy sugar loaf, culminating 
in a dome near 200 feet high, containing a renowned pulpit 
which I forgot to look at, and having the ability to furnish an 
echo that is its chiel wonder. The Campo Santo is the burial 
ground, where fifty ship loads of dirt brought from Jerusalem, 
constitute the earth which receives the bodies of those buried 
there. This place is surrounded by a high wall, and a wide 
covered portico where are many curious relics. The walls are 
covered with a dauby and faded fresco painting, representing vari- 
ous subjects that can hardly be guessed at after the conductor 
has told us what they are. 

Of course we made ourselves drunk and brought the sweat 
streaming down our backs climbing to the top of the Leaning 
Tower, and we fairly made the custodians dance by ringing the 
big bells up there, out of hours. All these buildings are from 
six hundred to eight hundred years old. I might tell by refer- 
ence to some one's guide book but I would rather not. When 
I got to London I buried all the guide books I had in the trunk 
I left there, and have not felt disposed to be burdened with one 
since. So, if any statistics should now and then prove a little 
faulty, you can understand the reason. 

The water or the atmosphere, or something else must be very 
bad on eyesight about Pisa. There are so many blind people at 
that place lying in wait for you. They barred every door of 
these old buildings we entered, and many urchins led them 
about and skilfully blockaded our way at every turn until they 
annoyed us so much we almost wished their bones were lying- 
in the Campo Santo. How very natural it is for people to beg 
in Italy, and oh, how often do the calls of hunger and wan 
prompt the act. 

In the journey from Rome to Pisa we passed through two 
rather important places, Leghorn and Civita Veccliea, but did 
not make more than a halt there and a slight exchange of fleas. 
15 



114 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 

I tell you this flea business is a terrible annoyance, and scratch- 
ing is one of our chief entertainments. When we first went to 
Rome and took on the old Roman flea, many seekers after relics 
from this part of the world were rather proud of the acquisition, 
and hoped to take some home ; but after we went down to 
Naples and got multiplied, and then came back and picked up 
another Roman invoice, with additions at several minor places, 
till our bodies became a battle ground for these hungry and in- 
dustrious vermin, and we could no longer identify our cherished 
Roman flea from the ignoble herd around him, we began to feel 
that we would like to shake the entire companv and bid them 
good bye forever. But they won't shake worth a cent, and I 
suppose we must still count our hunts after them in the privacy 
of our chambers, by the uncertain light of a sickly European 
candle, as one of our chief sources of delight. 

We left Pisa at noon and reached our hotel here at eight 
o'clock to-night. Our stay here will be short, as we leave at 
noon to-morrow. We have seen the monument of Columbus 
and went to see his autograph letter. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 15 



LETTER XVII. 



From Genoa, Italy, to Brieg, Switzerland— The Party losing interest -Hot and dusty 
Italy Genoa — Trying to talk Italian — Country Improving— Arrival at Milan 
Tlie Grand ' athedral and Magnificent Arcade — The Picture of the Last Sup- 
per and comments thereon — Lake San Maggoire and the Barromean Islands 
Crossing the Alps in diligences by day and hy night- Unequalled scenery- 
Arrival at Brieg— Stop for the night. 

Brieg, Switzerland, August 16, 1879. 

I believe I closed my last letter at Genoa. I am not certain 
of it. We have been on the pad so continually that I have 
about lost my identity as well as my bearings. I am almost 
beginning to think we are getting too large a dose of this tour. 
The way we rush around and keep in a perpetual stew has been 
telling on some members of our party. They begin to lose in- 
terest in the journey, and it is hard to arouse their enthusiasm. 
Many of them persist in sleeping in the cars while we are bowl- 
ing through a country they will know as little about as if they 
had remained in America. This has only been the case since 
we left Naples. We will date many of our miseries from our 
visit to Naples. I honestly believe some of us have not yet 
been able to digest the bread we ate there. But this is no easy 
trip, especially that part lying in Italy, and unless we get rested, 
now that we are out of the heat and dust and noises and 



Il6 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

stenches of that priest-ridden land, we may begin to long for 
the end of it, and for the time that will find us aboard of our 
vessel homeward bound. 

We did not like our hotel in Genoa. The building was good 
enough and the rooms up to the average, but there were so 
many extras at the table, and such a disposition to force these 
upon us to the neglect of those things which belong to the reg- 
ular bill of fare, that we felt more than ever before a disposition 
to rend somebody and compose our minds. 

We spent the day of our arrival up to noon in hurrying about 
seeing the principal objects of interest and admiring the rather 
good looking women we met in large numbers in the streets. 
The chief things we did not see were the manuscript letters of 
Columbus and Paganini's old fiddle. We were willing to take 
these at second hand, but we had to drive around Columbus' 
monument and feel grateful that he had discovered a country 
and a home for us. Even if he were not able to write a good 
fist, as Mark Twain unkindly intimated, we feel kindly towards 
Columbus. 

Our drive led through the handsome park of the city, and we 
all regretted our arrival so late in the evening previous. We were 
not favored with a look at the throngs of big bugs who congre- 
gate and air themselves there in the breezy afternoons. We 
drove through one long street upon which nearly every build- 
ing we passed was a palace, and we kept our driver on the rack 
trying to make us understand their names. One of the party 
in the carriage in which I rode was ever so busy endeavoring 
to talk to this fellow; and the manner in which he mixed 
French, Dutch and Italian, with an occasional dab of English 
into one heterogeneous mass, was beyond comprehension. It 
absolutely confounded the driver, and now and then he would 
rein up his horse and sit in speechless amazement till, by yells 
and cries from the sane ones of the party, he would recover his 
senses and drive on. If we could have read their language and 
could have seen the morning paper the next day, we would no 
doubt have seen a notice of the death of this man from exhaus- 
tion in endeavoring to comprehend the gabbling of an Ameri- 
can Tourist. The truth of the matter is, some of us make woful 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 11/ 

asses of ourselves, and will have forgotten our mother tongue 
if we do not soon quit this country. We often lunge away into 
an abyss of incomprehensible jargon, trying to give some order 
at the table, and have grown so hopelessly foolish that we 
barely recover our senses when the waiter, with a look of dis- 
gust on his face, asks us, in good English, what we want. We 
have now left Italy and are among a French speaking people, 
soon again to pass into England, and I apprehend all the lan- 
guages will mix and run together in such a confused way that 
the tongue we shall speak aboard our ship will create greater 
confusion than was known to Babel, for not even two will be 
able to speak the some dialect. 

We left Genoa at noon very much pleased with our short stay 
there, and regretting we could not see more of the city. As we 
sped northward the country improved very greatly in appear- 
ance, and gave evidence of better soil and higher cultivation. 
The view upon either hand was pleasing to the eye, and even 
our wearied sight-seers enjoyed it. We arrived at Milan near 
ten that night, drove through its elegant streets, by the mag- 
nificent Arcade and the renowned Cathedral, and into the court 
yard at our hotel, to finish a hearty dinner at half-past eleven 
that threw the greater number of us into the nightmare before 
the dawn of day. The next morning we went first to the Ca- 
thedral that has already cost its one hundred and ten million 
dollars, climbed to the top of its tallest spire, gazed upon acres of 
marble roof, its hundreds of spires and its four thousand costly 
marble statues, and going down into its basement, saw the treas- 
ures which have caused so many to stare; then went back to our 
hotel and wanted to see no more Cathedrals. Here was the 
queen of them all in her loveliness and grandeur, and a sight of 
her made all other churches appear tame. A few drove 
out to the old convent and took a squint at the old daub out 
there so famous throughout the civilized world as the picture of 
The Last Supper, and which, but for its great age and continuous 
laudations of those whose admiration flows at second hand, would 
hardly now, whatever its merit may once have been, create any 
great amount of furore. If a man with a taste for art can dis- 
cover a beauty in this frescoe painting through the dirt and 



Il8 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

smoke that cover it as with a pall, then I do not envy him the 
acuteness of his vision. If an ordinary mortal did not have 
the aid of copies he would hardly guess at the subject from a 
look at the original, even after its having been touched up by 
modern artists of good ability It seems that in the time when 
probably it was new and bright, the monks in the convent 
had no appreciation of it, for they cut a door right through the 
walls upon which it was painted, and through the painting itself, 
and it was disfigured in this way for very many years until 
some relic hunters discovered it was a work of one of the old 
masters. 

There are eighty churches all told in Milan, but after^having 
seen the big one we wanted to see no more. But we saw 
hundreds of fat well dressed priests, and oceans of beggars in 
the streets. With the state upon one hand, with its legions of 
soldiers to be equipped and fed, and the church upon the other 
hand, with its nearly as numerous clergy to be supported in 
worse than idleness, and churches as thick as hailstones and too 
costly to describe, there is no wonder at the extreme poverty 
and great want of the people of Italy. The countenance of a 
priest will light up as he sees the shade of wonder passing over the 
face of a visitor to the relics of a church, but the sight of the 
hideous beggars who block the way and whine for alms does not 
excite his pity in the least. On the contrary, I suspect he 
would rather have them so than otherwise. I am not writing 
against Catholicism or against Catholics — for I have many- 
friends in that faith — but I write of what I see here and the 
effect of what I see upon the people. - I have seen no such 
shadow of poverty and ignorance combined in any other part 
of Europe as I have seen all over Italy. 

Leaving Milan at noon and putting ^behind us, perhaps for- 
ever, her quarter of a million of people, and her handsome, 
well-paved streets and elegant business houses, we run out by 
cars to Arona, on Lake San Maggoire, where we took steamer for 
Stresa, which place we reached at 4 o'clock. Here we took 
dinner and rested till 1 1 o'clock that night. The scenery is 
very beautiful on this lake, and "especially in view of Stresa ; 
and had we made the ride earl}- in our tour we would have gone 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. MO. 

into raptures over it, but we have seen so much of the same 
thing, it is growing threadbare, and I actually saw some of our 
people asleep on the boat as we steamed along. 

Lying in front of our hotel were the Barromean Islands and 
from which the house derived its name: "Hotel des lies Bar- 
romeo." I believe a fellow by the name of Barromeo once 
owned this part of Italy. It was he who contributed from his 
inexhaustible quarries a large portion of the marble for the 
building of the church at Milan, and whose corpse now lies in 
such splendor in one of the crypts of that Church. He may 
have been a good looking chap in his clay, but the sight of him 
now, at a cost of five francs, is very discouraging indeed. One 
of the islands is the home of a very wealthy Italian nobleman, 
and is adorned with a stately residence, and gardens containing 
trees, plants and shrubs from every part of the globe. Two 
dozen or more rowed over there from the hotel and came back 
distracted, from which I imagine the place to be unusually at- 
tractive. 

At 1 1 o'clock that night we took diligences and struck out 
for the Alps. A diligence is a good enough thing in its way, 
but when loaded to its capacity, especially with, six persons in 
the centre compartment, may prove uncomfortable. Our squad 
generally overflows everything, and did so effectually in this 
instance, so that at the start we were crowded, but a little 
after daylight when we changed horses and fairly began the 
ascent, as many as could, including ladies, climbed upon the 
top and found seats there. Early in the morning we took 
breakfast in the court yard of a hotel, in open air, and I gutss 
if the landlord had made any reduction on account of wholesale, 
he lost money by the contract to feed us. It is impossible to 
keep within the bounds of reason and tell the actual quantity 
of provender we consumed. The air among the Alps seemed 
to be better than wine of. iron or any other appetizer druggist 
ever prepared. At two o'clock that day we stopped a while 
for lunch, and literally ate up every article of food we could lay 
our hands on, and then left hungry. At four in the afternoon 
we reached the summit and sped down the mountain, reaching 
Brieg at seven. The programme was to take the cars at once 



120 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 

and continuue our journey four hours longer to Vernayaz, but 
we were much too late for the regular train, and not being wil- 
ling to wait the hours it would require to move the extra one in 
waiting for us, we were sped about over the picturesque moun- 
tain town and quartered in its various hotels and restaurants for 
the night, ever so glad to get a rest after our long and exciting 
ride over the Alps. 

It would be foolish for me to attempt a description of the 
scenery that greeted us among the crags and glaciers and gorges 
and torrents and cascades of these snow-capped mountains of 
Europe ; nor, could I convey to you any part, even, of the de- 
light experienced by our travel- worn party, especially those who 
had never witnessed mountain scenery before. The great 
peaks which pierced the clouds, and hid their summits beyond ; 
immense walls of rock that rose perpendicularly for a thousand 
feet or more, and often overhung our very heads ; the roaring 
cataracts that leaped from bluffs away up the mountain sides 
and dashed themselves into foam and spray hundreds of teet 
below ; the tiny streams from the melting snows coursing their 
way to the valley and looking so like silver ribbons laid crook- 
edly upon the uneven surface of the mountains; the very clouds 
around us and the banks of snow within reach, and from which 
we grabbed handsful to munch upon the way ; the broad, solid, 
magnificent pike that has no equal upon the globe, winding its 
tortuous way around peaks and under crags and through tunnels 
and over bridges that cross great chasms that make one dizzy 
to see, and threads around solid stony promontories which we 
fancy have neither base or summit as we sit atop the diligences 
involuntarily clinging to anything within reach of our hands for 
fear of going over and being dashed to atoms a thousand feet 
below; the Swiss chalets perched almost among the clouds, with 
little patches of tilable soil around them that must be irrigated 
by the melting snows; the bright children running alongside our 
diligences holding up bright and delicate mountain flowers to 
exchange with us for pennies; the constant and varied change 
of scenery from grand to grander still, and the concluding ride 
down the mountain, combined to give us such a day of enjoy- 
ment as we have not had since leaving home. Our weariness 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 121 

and hunger were forgotten, and sick people who insisted upon 
being propped up inside the diligences took on enthusiasm be- 
fore the sun put its rays about us, and climbed on top to whoop 
and shout with the more robust. It was indeed a grand ride 
over Napoleon's wonderful road, and throughout its entire 
length we had to admire the genius and energy of the man 
whose brain conceived it, and at whose will it was constructed. 
This letter was written in detachments, and is finished in 
Brieg, as I wait for a breakfast I shall certainly enjoy. We 
leave between ten and eleven o'clock, and during the day will 
have six hours more riding in diligences in the mountains. 




16 



j22 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 



LETTER XVIIL 



From Brieg to Vernayaz— A Charming Hotel and a glorious rest— The Gorges of 
the Trent— A thunder storm on the mountains— A day's carriage ride over 
the Tete Noir Pass— First view of Mont Blanc and some tamous Glaciers- 
Cold winds in August— An excursion to the Mer de Glace Glacier on mules 
ana afoot— The ambitious toilers up Mont Blanc— Losing the biggest thing 
of the tour. 

Chamounix, France, Augustus, 1879. 

I suspect it would be regarded by you as inexcusable if I 
failed to write you a letter from this place. I begin it sitting 
by my window in the hotel Palais de distal, and through 
which I look out at Mont Blanc, which overshadows this little 
town. I closed my last letter at Brieg, in Switzerland, when 
• about worn out with constant travel. That day we had only a 
short run in the cars to Vernayaz, where we stopped at a most 
delightful hotel in view of impressive scenery, and got a glorious 
rest. The day was cloudy and rain fell copiously during the 
two hours ride, so that instead of finding the valley of the 
Rhone, down which the road runs, a hot one, the air was so 
cool the more tender ones insisted upon closing the car win- 
dows, and when at rest in the hotel we easily imagined a fire 
would be comfortable. At night, when we retired, we nestled 
away down under the cover, dragging the^pillows of down with 
us, and would not have fallen into a perspiration had the quan- 
tity of cover been doubled. We had been warned that we 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE, I 23 

should find it hot at Brieg and Vernayaz, and felt grateful that 
the clouds and rain had so timely favored us. 

During" the afternoon we spent the time in exclamations of 
delight at the surroundings, in visiting the Gorges of the Trent, 
and the ambitious cascade whose name it would not be polite 
to put in print, and promenading around and around the hotel 
we so much admired. The gorge, while is does not at all com- 
pare in extent and depth with the great Arkansas canyon, in 
Colorado, is nevertheless quite imposing, and the foot bridge 
which runs along its sides for a half a mile or more, upon spikes 
driven into the solid rock wails, crossing and recrossing the 
river at intervals, gives the tourist an opportunity to witness it 
which is not obtained at any gorge within our own country. 
And I may here say, that is one of the features of this country. 
Wherever there is any object at all striking in nature, the peo- 
ple, where it is at all possible, have devised means for reaching 
and seeing it to the best advantage. Aside from the bridge I 
have mentioned along the Gorge of Trent, from which you can 
not look out upon the sky above, owing to the overhanging 
cliffs which almost shut out the light of day, there is a substan- 
tial trail, well walled up, to the top of the mountain, so that a 
climb up there to gaze a thousand feet down into this chasm, 
cut through solid stone, is not an irksome one. At night, as we 
sat in our rooms writing to friends at home, there was a thun- 
der storm on the mountain above us, and it was pleasant to hear 
the peals reverberating through the valley, and to have the 
lightning playing upon us through the windows. It was all 
the more enjoyable from the fact that we had not seen a cloud 
scarcely in parched and dusty Italy, and barely a drop of rain 
before that day since leaving drowned out England. 

We were due here night before last, and for yesterday, (Sun- 
day,) our programme has it "a day of rest among some of the 
most sublime mountain scenery in Europe," but the general 
sentiment was to come on here and have Monday for the sights 
mapped out for us. So, early in the morning, we climbed into 
nineteen of the peculiarly constructed carriages of this region, 
and retracing our steps along the Rhone as far as Martigney, 
plunged into the mountains a n d did some honest work durin 



124 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

the day. We were to cross the range again, this time by the 
Tete Noir Pass, and had proceeded but a very short distance 
when the drivers very politely indicated that we must try Walk- 
er's line for a while, which all, except the few sick, the aged 
and the lazy ones of the party, very cheerfully did. The day 
was again cool, and the road free from dust, with an abundance 
of shade for the first two or three miles. As our caravan of 
vehicles and footmen strung out for miles along the winding 
road, and scattered about over the mountain side, taking by- 
paths and short-cuts up the gradual ascent, we met many of the 
Swiss cottagers going to church in the valley, which lay stretch- 
ed out in a lovely panorama below. Chalets were dotted 
thickly along the less precipitous mountain sides, and the pleas- 
ant women and children swarmed the wayside, offering us 
tempting cherries, apricots, raspberries, strawberries, and goat's 
milk at moderate prices. By the aid of some of these the "lit- 
tle one" footed it nearly to the summit, after a trudge of six 
miles or more, and Miss Josie, with her fifteen summers and 
her lithe Yankee limbs, never rested till she was seated in the 
hotel at the summit devouring a saucer of strawberries and 
cream. We all like Josie, and hope she will survive the constant 
supervision she claims it is necessary to exercise over her ex- 
cellent and devoted mother. 

From Forclaz, upon the summit, until we reached the river 
Trent below, the descent was frightfully steep, passing now and 
then on the very brink of precipices that nearly took our breath 
to see, and once cutting a tunnel through the solid rock where 
a road bed could be obtained in no other way. At about three 
o'clock we took lunch at a hotel stuck into the cliffs, paying 
two francs for a very enjoyable meal of meat, milk, eggs and 
strawberries. From this point, continuing our journey down- 
ward, we finally left one stream, started up another, passed into 
France, swung around in a circle, climbed the summit of anbther 
range, and from that point could see the immense one of which 
Mont Blanc is a small part. Ahead of us lay peak after peak, 
mantled around their summits in unbroken sheets of snow, and 
as the winds came wafting from them, we did a little mantling 
ourselves in the way of getting inside of all the wraps we could 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 25 

lay our hands upon. After we had passed down into the valley 
and were traveling down the river, we came alongside the 
Mont Blanc range and saw a few of the big glaciers of the Alps, 
two of which had crawled down to the very banks of the stream, 
carrying along their millions of tons of earth and snow. We 
had hoped to have a good view of the peaks of this range, but 
when fairly opposite them masses of miserable dark clouds drag- 
ged themselves across its face and shut out the view. We were 
particularly anxious to see Mont Blanc, and this accident great- 
ly discouraged us, but all at once, and for a moment only, there 
came a great rift in the clouds, and there stood out grandly be- 
fore us and high above us the Monarch of the Alps, its snow- 
white head illuminated by the sun, which had sunk, to us, be- 
hind the mountains on the right. 

Arriving at this place and finding the hotels pretty well filled 
with tourists, we were again quartered about over the place, 
but all of us snugly located and pleased, except a very few 
chronic growlers whose chief aim seems to be to render them- 
selves miserable and everybody else uncomfortable. This is a 
town made up of hotels, variety stores, the homes of guides, 
washer-women and owners of mules. I am afraid to state how 
many hotels the little place has, but I am sure I have seen near- 
ly a dozen myself, and I have been around very little at that. 
The country is literally alive with tourists, and you see them 
everywhere, riding or trudging up and down the roads with al- 
penstocks in their hands, They are nearly as great a study as 
the country itself. I have no doubt that while the citizens are 
glad of an opportunity to make money out of them, they regard 
them as average idiots who ought to be caged at home. And 
in this category 1 can not think the Americans take a back seat. 

This morning about half our party started on an excursion 
up the mountain called Mer de Glace, leaving the hotel on 
mules. Each was accompanied with an attendant, and as the 
odd-looking cortege filed through the streets I expressed a 
hearty wish that they could be seen in that rig by friends at 
home. It beat anything I have so far seen. It was better than 
a view of the Bay of Naples, or a sight of the scantily dressed 
Neapolitan urchins standing on their heads in front of our hotel 



126 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

down there. I am sorry no lightning photographer was on 
hand to catch the picture and transfer it to card. It absolutely 
"beat bobtail." When the "little one" mounted the biggest 
mule in the lot — and they are all large — that animal jerked the 
skin on its back as though trying to rid itself of a pestiferous 
horsefly. During the journey, which will consume the day, 
there will be a two hour's climb over some glaciers, when all 
hands will have an opportunity of getting a real taste of the Al- 
pine snows. As for myself, I concluded to "pass," and take 
the trip ''second hand." 

Two days ago three men started for the summit of Mont 
Blanc, having now spent two nights upon the mountain. This 
morning, by the aid of the immense telescope rigged in the yard 
of our hotel, we could see the flag flying at the upper station to 
indicate they had passed that point. At 8 o'clock the men 
themselves passed from behind a tall glacier, slowly toiling their 
way up, and apparently miles from the summit. One of them 
seemed to be exhausted, and was down very often. Later, 
they huddled together for a while, and then turned their steps 
down the mountain, evidently having abandoned the weary, 
weary tramp. I have been watching the mountain ever since, 
when not obscured by drifting clouds, and between running to 
the telescope, writing this letter and watching for clear intervals, 
I have had a mixed time of it. I think the letter would have 
gone to the bad entirely had not a cloud of hopeless blackness 
settled over Mont Blanc and shut out the view for the day. 
The last look I- had showed me only two men working their 
way down, and five others, who started out yesterday, going up 
with miles of snow and hundreds of fissures before them. They 
tell me here that the summit is ten to twelve miles away in a 
direct line, and over thirty to the ambitious chap who goes up 
there. The ascent was once regarded as a remarkable feat, but 
now a great many perform it annually. For my own part I 
would rather sit here and gaze upon it while the river Arve goes 
dashing by under the balcony of my window. There is as 
much poetry and less toil and danger in "thus doing" Mont 
Blanc. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE, 12/ 

Since the above was written, the wanderers to the Mer de 
Glace (Sea of Ice) have returned, and have been putting me on 
the rack by assuring me I have lost the biggest thing of the 
tour. I am forever missing the biggest thing. I suppose they 
grow in size as we advance, and if we were to tramp around the 
globe and I should house up on the last day before making the 
circuit, I would then miss the very biggest thing. I am begin- 
ning to feel it is cruel to tantalize me in this way. The first 
thing they know I may rush wildly out and climb Mont Blanc. 
No, I won't either, for as I cast my eye upwards (I have been 
seated facing the old fellow that the slumbering poetical feelings 
may be aroused within me) I see a storm in progress towards 
the summit, and I know that the adventurous men already up 
there wish themselves safe down here in the valley. 

To-morrow we leave early in a species of two story diligences, 
for Geneva, where we will spend two nights and a full day. We 
are getting ravenously hungry to see some more churches, and 
expect to appease the appetite at that city. I am going out 
now to hunt some more wraps and a hot brick for my cold feet. 
We warmed our hands on the hot plates at dinner time, and 
now I want to apply some caloric to my feet and back. If it 
keeps this cold much longer the ducks will begin to fly south- 
ward. 




128 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 



LETTER XIX. 



A ride in two story diligences ironi Chamounix to Geneva — The splendid road 
along the river Arve— Small apples and William Tell— Eating in general — 
How American tourists clear the platter — Horse flies — Americans thick as 
bees in Geneva — Concert on the Grand Organ— Shopping — The result of the 
the mule rides at Chamounix — Cafes and drinking— A sample of hotel keeping 
—A sick tourist— Charming Geneva. 

Geneva, Switzerland, August 20, 1879. 

On Tuesday morning the seventy-four (we have not yet lost a 
man] climbed by ladder into the lumbering two-story diligences 
and started over a pike one could not desire to better, for Gen- 
eva. The air was cool and bracing, and, as the horses struck 
off down the road, jingling the necklace of sleighbells around 
their necks, we wrapped our shawls and coats snugly around us 
to keep our bodies warm, forgetting that it was August, even 
though it were but a few days since leaving Italy. The road 
for the entire distance of fifty-four miles lies along the river 
Arve, and in many places the descent ^s quite rapid, which will 
give some idea of the difference in elevation between Chamou- 
nix and Geneva. The scenery along the route while not so 
grand, perhaps, as that through which we had bgen passing, 
and which lay around Chamounix, was still very beautiful in its 
more subdued character, and we had as much enjoyment from 
the ride as from any other since the one taken upon Nopoleon's 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 20. 

road over the Simplon Pass. This road is as near perfect, I 
would imagine, as it can be, and it only wanted the wilder 
mountain scenery, and the more difficult region of the other to 
create the same amount of admiration for it. It is a Govern- 
ment road, and the mails, the express, the telegraph and the 
diligences which pass over it are all in charge of and conducted, 
like clock-work, by the Government. As I understand it, these 
are not separate bureaus, but all combined, the "Poste" carry- 
ing you, or your letters, or your trunk, or Sending your tele- 
gram at moderate rates, and with careful and certain dispatch. 

After traveling some ten miles, the valley widens out, and the 
mountain slopes become more gentle, so they are tillable to a 
great height, thus giving a breadth of territory, in a high state 
of cultivation, from two to five miles in width. The road is stud- 
ded with the brown Swiss cottages of every variety in construc- 
tion, and lined with fruit trees so closely overhanging the 
road that you can pluck the fruit sitting in your seat in the 
dilligence as it goes whirling by. The fruit is of an indiffer- 
ent character, the pears being small and the apples both small 
and imperfectly formed. Since seeing the apples of Switzerland 
I entertain a greater respect for the marksmanship of Tell than 
I ever did, even when a boy, as I gazed in breathless wonder 
upon the picture of his son calmly standing with an apple upon 
his head as big as a two pound turnip. If the apples of to-day 
are a fair sample of those of Tell's time, I don't see how he 
could have sent an ordinary sized arrow through one on his 
boy's head without lifting a little of the scalp. 

The plumbs were so sour they doubled us up like a rainbow 
when we were foolish enough to eat them, but the cherries and 
raspberries we found delicious. Being on matters of diet, I 
would say that the milk and honey of Switzerland are what cap- 
ture the hungry tourist, and I have seen members of our party 
almost throw waiters into spasms by the way they have scooped 
into the dishes of honey. But we have some awful eaters in 
the crowd, and the rapidity with which a big cake of pudding 
or a pyramid of ice cream will disappear, after being started 
along the line, is one of the sights of the town. Each waiter 
has his own territory at the table marked out upon the floor, 
17 



130 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 

and as they begin at the end, I have watched the countenances 
of those sitting well down the line and noted the look of anxiety 
as the big eaters plunged into the coming dish, and finally the 
one of despair when the contents of the dish entirely disappear- 
ed long before it reached them. At Chamounix as we were 
closing dinner, a large dish of pudding started down the line 
towards me, there being a lady on my right, and myself within 
the bounds of that bailiwick. The pudding got along very well 
and was only half consumed when it reached the two ladies on 
my left, when, with a full scoop from each they cleaned the 
platter. It was such a case of gluttony that even the polite 
and well drilled waiter could not suppress his laughter, but went 
off in a painful quiver to hunt some more pudding with which 
to serve me and my unfortunate neighbor, At Vernayaz a dish 
of fishes was started along by a waiter without the precaution of 
cutting them into respectable pieces. The two first chaps who 
had a pull at the dish, each took out a whole fish large enough 
to pull an ordinary man off a mill dam, if alive and hooked to 
his line, when the waiter deliberately sat the dish down, and 
then and there cut up what remained. It may be that our 
party are an exception to the average American tourist abroad, 
and that few such gourmands could be found in an equal num- 
ber, but I fear not. The piggishness of Americans is a subject 
of just criticism on the part of Europeans. I often look at some 
of our party eating, and wonder where in the deuce they stow 
away the piles of provender they heap upon their plates. From 
what I have seen over here I am convinced that Americans eat 
at least double the quantity that is eaten by the residents of 
this country, not even excepting England. 

The chief discomfort of the ride to Geneva were clouds of 
horse flies that swarmed around our horses and gathered in 
banks upon their necks and bodies. It annoyed both the pas- 
sengers and the horses. Some of the ladies felt so sorry for 
the animals they insisted every now and then upon the driver 
stopping the diligence and brushing the flies, which, of course, 
he declined doing. The passengers, in the diligence which fell 
to my lot, were afflicted through the efforts of a famous singer 
of the party — a very large old bachelor, from Maine, inexhausti- 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 131 

ble in wind and limb — who pinioned us on the rack and kept us 
suffering there through half of the ride. He fancies he is well 
up in the peculiar trill of the Swiss mountaineers, and the doses 
that he poured into our ears, interlarded with ancient home 
songs such as "Uncle Ned," "Ole Virginny," and the like, 
came near being the end of some of us. I am real sorry there 
was not a phonographer along that we might have preserved and 
brought home these charming efforts amidst this Alpine 
scenery. 

We passed from France into Switzerland a few miles before 
the end of our journey, and drove up to our hotel in handsome 
Geneva at four o'clock in the afternoon, with Mont Blanc still 
in plain view, forty miles away, to remind us of the misguided 
Bostonian who fell down into the icy gorge not long since, and 
whose body now lies frozen and stiff beyond the reach of human 
hands. 

A fete which began yesterday was in progress and the city 
was in gay attire, decorated with imposing arches of flowers 
and evergreens, and bright colored flags and banners. But it 
does not take these to render Geneva attractive. At night, 
with its myriads of lights on the quay and on the bridges cross- 
ing the clear, blue river, which cuts it in two, the lovely scene 
is sure to win you from the hotel for a stroll over the city. And 
if you suffer yourself to go into the alluring shops, you are pret- 
ty sure to come out with your ready cash greatly diminished. 
We find Americans here as thick as bees, and. at almost any 
reasonable hour of the clay they may be seen crowding about 
shop windows and discussing what they will buy. It is truly- 
wonderful how many things Americans purchase while in Eu- 
rope. Some of them spend one half of their time in prowling 
around and into shops. It is no doubt a pleasant way of spend- 
ing their spare time. I do considerable of it myself, and I must 
confess it is by no means an unpleasant thing to do. 

A concert on the grand organ in the Cathedral of St. Peter's 
was given to-day to the members of our section, which perhaps 
two-thirds of them attended and enjoyed, going thence to the 
museum, but I preferred striking out on my own hook, stroll- 
ing over the city, standing on the bridges looking down into 



132 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

the lovely water to see the trout dashing by, watching the rows 
of washer-women in the small houses out in the stream washing 
clothes in water which is always clean, and taking my turn 
worrying the shop keepers. 

Coming back to the hotel at 3 o'clock I find myself very tired, 
but not quite so badly used up as were many of the ladies, who 
had the fun of riding mules up and down the mountain at Cha- 
mounix. "Oh my poor back !" is a common expression just 
now, and I don't have near so many tantalizing me for staying 
at home that day. The "pharmacie" stores have done a lively 
little trade in plasters and salves since our arrival here, and I am 
real sorry to hear more than one Mer de Glace excursionist at- 
tributing their ills to the hard seats in the dilligences yesterday. 
I think I never saw 2 party who had such a quiet, subdued way 
of sitting' down, even upon the most unexceptionable sofa. But 
to see big sights, such as the Mer de Glace glaciers, one must 
suffer in the flesh now and then. So it is what I have heard 
and seen this day which makes me no longer regret that I lost 
the biggest thing of the tour when I stayed in my room at Cha- 
mounix, watching the adventurous men toiling up and down 
Mont Blanc. 

The country is full of cafes, and Geneva comes in for a full 
share. Their patrons mostly sit on the pavement in front of 
them, and often in such crowds that passing pedestrians must 
leave the side-waik and take the middle of the street. Last 
night a party of us had to flank them so often in a street facing 
the river that we moved into a street further back to avoid the 
maneuver. Next to Venice, Geneva stands ahead in this re- 
spect. In St. Mark's Square, in Venice, there were places 
where one can barely pass at all between the hours of 8 and 10 
p. m. But the drinks are mild ones and not indulged in to ex- 
cess. 1 have seen but one intoxicated person since the jostling 
I got in the street at Glasgow. Some one said that one of the 
drivers coming over the Simplon Pass had too much, but I am 
assured it was forced upon him by persons in the diligence 
anxious to accelerate the speed of the horses. I believe they 
regretted the experiment, as a driver over that route should be 
wide awake and in the full possession of his senses. Our own 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 33 

people, if they were so disposed, could learn a useful lesson in 
the matter of dram drinking" from the people on the continent 
of Europe. 

Last night we had a sample of hotel keeping in Europe. 
About three o'clock, the three in our room were aroused by a 
member of the party, who had been violently taken ill, in search 
of medicine to give him some relief. He had played a horn- 
pipe on the electric bell for half an hour, and getting no answer, 
and fearing he would die alone in his room, began groping 
about over the house seeking midicine from his fellow voyagers. 
In this way he fell upon our room. We then took a little dance 
on our bell, in the vain hope that we might produce a different 
sound, and awake a porter or a chambermaid somewhere ; but 
for all the good we accomplished we had as well blown a whistle 
into the ears of a dead man. One of my room mates remem- 
bering that his mother had the very specific needed, took a 
candle (they even turn off the gas in the halls at 12) and sough 
her room. In doing so he was hailed by a lady boarder, who 
had also been practicing upon the bell to see if she could not 
obtain a nurse for her child, who had a broken nose and who 
had fretted so long the anxious mother was nearly worn out. 
But half an hour later I dropped to sleep, with the faint sound 
of the persevering woman's bell jingling in my ears from the 
depths below. My room mate industriously sought to find 
some one connected .with the house, but was unsuccessful. 
What would be thought of a first-class American hotel in which 
such a thing could occur ? But one of these days I want to 
write a little paragraph on European hotels, not all bad, and 
I'll reserve further comments .for that occasion. 

The attempt to take our picture in the Roman Forum resulted 
in an utter failure. The combined scenery was too much for the 
man's instrument and so strained it that all of us resembled a gang 
of twisted-mouthed monkeys squinting at the sun. But he fixed 
us under the Porter's gallery in the court-yard of the Hotel Cos- 
tanzi, and the result has just reached us here in the shape of 
very questionable photographs of a jumbled up set of tourists. 



134 



THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 



To-morrow we leave early by the steamer on Lake Geneva for 
Chillon and sundry other places too tedious to mention. If I 
could only stop long enough to take a good fish and had per- 
mission to hook a few trout I would be satisfied. But I guess 
I will have to wait till I come home and try my hand in the 
waters of the State of Mississippi. 




TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 35 



LETTER XX. 



Fire at Geneva and primitive flre engines —Crowds of tourists— Leaving Geneva 
by steamer for Chillon — The dead prisoner Bonivard and the famous Castle 
—Handsome Lake Geneva and picturesque surroundings— Blunted enthusi- 
asm—An anecdote of a Montana friend— Arrival at Fribourg and stay there 
for the night— Concert— The famous tree— On the Thun— On the Interlaken— 
A lovely place— Excursions to Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald— The first 
Alpine Horn -Saw mills— Wrestling Tournament — Music and flowers every- 
where. 

Interlaken, Switzerland, August 24, 1879. 

They had a fire at Geneva the last evening of our stay there. 
Being near the hotel some of us went to see it, and witnessed 
about as primitive an arrangement for subduing the raging ele- 
ment as it has ever been our fortune to see. The engines 
looked as though the pattern had been gotten out when the 
Alps had been created, and were capable of throwing a stream 
large enough to supply one thirsty ox till his thirst was 
quenched. The fire was raising a little racket near the roof of 
the building, and a fellow ran through the house and lowered a 
rope out of the window by which to haul up the hose. After 
some industrious pumping they finally got the water to flow up 
there about the time the fire had been extinguished by the aid 
of a few buckets and a little stamping round. But there is not 
much necessity for a fire department in any part of Europe that 



I36 THE BTG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

I have seen. There is so little wood about the buildings it 
would even be difficult to set them on fire. One sees very few 
evidences in all his travels anywhere of the ravages of an ele- 
ment which is a source of such constant anxiety and loss to the 
people in our own country. 

We could not buy out Geneva or even kick up a stir there. 
The supply of music boxes, watches, jewelry, carved woodwork, 
and the like is inexhaustible, apparently, and there are so many 
English and American tourists crowding about its streets that 
the sight of a few extra ones does not strike the citizens as any- 
thing unusual. In nearly every shop there is some one who 
can speak a spattering of English sufficiently to make shopping 
less difficult. We have always found, in every place, our efforts 
to get something off the marked price the hardest thing for them to 
comprehend. In Italy this was a matter of some importance as 
there they generally ask at least half as much more than they 
expect to get for an article, but in Switzerland they charge only 
a little more in the first place than they are willing to take. So 
we left Geneva between six and seven o'clock in the morning by 
one of the swift little steamers which ply between the cosy 
towns that lie nestled along the banks of Lake Geneva, and 
sped away to Chillon, making landings to put off and take on 
passengers with the speed of a railroad train, and to the very 
minute as fixed by the time table. Each landing was announced 
before reaching it by hanging up a large sign with the name of 
the place upon it. The towns are very thick and consequently 
the landings were numerous. 

At • Nyon there is a castle, built in the twelfth century, and 
noted more for its connection with the Bonaparte family than 
for its imposing appearance or anything very striking in its his- 
tory. We could not learn that any one had been starved to 
death in its dungeons (if it has any), or that any one's head had 
been chopped off with a dull cleaver within its walls, so we had 
no disposition to disembark and go through it. But we took to 
the shore it Chillon, leaving our luggage at the boat, which 
went to the end of the lake a few miles further on, and walked 
three quarters of a mile to the castle, which would be known 
to but few only for Byron's poem touching the prisoner who 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 137 

was confined there, and who spent six years of his life chained 
to one of the pillars of the dungeon — -a man by the name ot 
Bonivard — dead now — whose ambitious maneuvers did not 
please the cruel Duke of Savoy. Why the Duke did not whack 
off his head and be done with it, even tradition does not tell. 
We were shown all over the extensive place, and saw where 
Bonivard wore the stone pavement in his long tramp around 
the pillars ; the place where obstreperous prisoners were stretch- 
ed up and their feet toasted to keep them warm in the cold, 
damp cells ; the room with the inclined platform covered with 
knives, and upon which culprits were dropped through a trap 
door and made into sausage meat before rolling off into the 
lake in convenient bits of food for fishes ; and the large rooms, 
with their immense fire places, for the revellers, and the apart- 
ments of the ladies, who were attached to these lordly cut- 
throats, overlooking the lake and the Alps beyond. We saw 
the name of Byron, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, and others, 
carved on the dungeon pillars, and inspected the curious chapel 
in which the villainous Dukes played the hypocrite by making 
a show of religion. Returning to the town, we awaited the ar- 
rival of the boat, and then returned to Lausanne, where we took 
cars for Fribourg. 

If there is a more handsome lake in the world than Lake 
Geneva I want to go and see it, and see no more lakes. I re- 
gard it as absolutely enchanting, its entire length, the more 
abrupt mountains upon one side, with occasional glimpses of 
Mont Blanc, and the gradual slopes upon the other, covered 
with fields of green and ripening grain, and thousands of vine- 
yards with their numerous cottages and neat villages, with 
many large hotels and handsome residences, their picturesque 
yards running down to the beach, constitute a picture rare to 
see. Still, some of our people dozed and slept on the way.' 
We have become surfeited with beautiful scenery, and while we 
went into ecstacies over our ride upon the lakes in the Scottish 
Highlands, and exhausted the adjectives in our letters home 
describing what we saw, we now often look languidly at what is 
around us and feel no enthusiasm when we write about it. I 
remember during the Centennial year traveling the Hudson 
18 



I38 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN^ 

with two batchelor friends, one of whom had come in from the 
mountains of Montana after a residence of ten years amid its 
superb scenery, and who sat upon his stool on the steamer and 
slept two-thirds of the way from New York to Albany. The 
thing made me so mad I could hardly enjoy the trip. I shook 
the fellow up several times and told him he had better go home 
and go to bed ; that it looked ridiculous that he should stage it 
over 500 miles to a railroad and then travel 2,000 miles to sleep 
in an uncomfortable position going up the Hudson. Every 
time I did so he would gaze up and around him in a sleepy way, 
and with a contemptuous twitch of his face and a provoking 
shrug of the shoulders, drop back into his doze, muttering com- 
plaints at my disturbing him. The tame mountains of the 
Hudson could not arouse his interest so soon after leaving the 
imposing Rockies. 

We reached Fribourg at 8 o'clock. As we drove up to the 
hotel we were greeted by the strains from a big band of about 
forty pieces, playing to a large crowd under the trees in the 
open square, and we had this music floating in at the windows 
as we partook of our late and acceptable dinner. The next 
morning a concert was given for our benefit on Switzerland's 
best organ. When we went into the Cathedral high mass was 
in progress for some departed member of the church. This 
being over the people took their departure and the organist at 
once opened out upon his programme of six pieces. I mark- 
ed my comments on each piece as it was played, and opposite 
the first I have written the word "buster," a slangy phrase, but 
fully expressing the character of the music. I was fearful 
atone time, it would lift off the roof of the church. A thunder 
storm in progress, with three hundred empty wagons dashing 
down a stony street, and a few healthy avalanches crashing 
down the mountain sides, would convey an idea of the roar of 
the organ in that selection. The third and a portion of the last 
were in the same order, and it evidently took so much wind to 
get up this breeze, I would not have been surprised to find the 
citizens short of air and gasping for breath had I gone out into 
the street. But the other selections were mild and gentle, and 
were played with a skill that pleased the ears of all and won the 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 130 

admiration of the musicians of the party. After the concert we 
went to see the two suspension bridges of the place, not re- 
markable in comparison with our bridges at home, except that 
one of them is very high, and is attached to the mountains it 
connects without piers. Fribourg has a population about equal- 
ly divided between French and German, who live in different 
parts of the place. 

Every visitor to Fribourg is taken to see a famous tree they 
have there. The story is that two hundred years, or more, 
ago, at a time a big battle was in progress, a wounded soldier 
came reding up to the commander of one of the opposing 
armies and brought the news of a victory. As soon as he had 
conveyed the joyful intelligence he fell and expired at the foot 
of a small tree. Since then this tree has been held in the highest 
veneration. It is very decrepid and is supported in many 
places by marble columns and props. Just now a vigorous 
young shoot has come up through the hollow trunk of the old 
tree, and the citizens are rejoiced at the idea that they will not 
lose the great memento. 

At noon we took the train for Thun, on the small lake of 
that name, and were transferred to a steamer which carried us 
to the other extremity. Here we climbed into double-decked 
cars and were brought to this place at five o'clock. Lake Thun 
is more beautiful, if possible, than Lake Geneva, and Interlaken 
is charming. It is one mass of elegant hotels and attract- 
ive shops. The yards in front of the hotels are ablaze with rare 
and beautiful flowers, enlivened by fountains that are fed by 
the melting snows upon the mountains overlooking the town. 
There are swarms of tourists here. The big hotels are reaping 
a rich harvest. The Kursaal, not inferior perhaps to that at 
Weisbaden in its palmiest days, is crowded at night with people 
who sit listening to the music of the band, second only to one or 
two others in Europe, and enjoying their ices and harmless 
drinks. There is music almost everwhere. All sorts of bands 
visit the hotels and play in the parlors, depending upon the lib- 
erality of guests for compensation. On the night of our arri- 
val, the tedium of a hungry caravan waiting for a late dinner 
was relieved by the appearance in the big parlor of three Ty- 



I4O THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

rolean warblers, two men and one handsome girl, dressed in 
their gaudy costume, who treated us with some exquisite music. 
Their music took . the house by storm. And last night while 
passing, I saw a juvenile band, composed of boys and girls, in 
full blast at one of the hotels. The little leader, with his fiddle, 
was standing upon a chair and burlesquing an excitable con- 
ductor. He was vociferously applauded by his spectators. 

Yesterday morning the party made an excursion in carriages 
to Lauterbrunnen and afterwards to Grindelwald, which occu- 
pied the day till five o'clock. In each case the road lay up a 
narrow valley between abrupt mountains covered with snow, 
and the scenery was equal to any we have seen in Switzerland. 
At the former place we visited the Staubach Falls and saw them 
take their seven hundred feet leap from an overhanging ledge 
away up the mountain side, and at the latter many of us climb- 
ed the glacier and got up an appetite that was hard to appease. 

During this trip we saw and beard our first Alpine horn. 
Going up a steep ascent, where many of us got out to walk, 
we heard ahead of us an occasional toot that resounded and re- 
verberated through the valley, and at last, at a sharp turn in 
the road, came upon the source of the fuss in the shape of an 
infamous wooden trumpet about ten feet long, slightly curled up 
at the large end similar to the bowl of a pipe standing say at an 
angle of forty-five degrees from the stem. It was about three 
inches in diameter at the small end and eight at the other, and 
bound together after the fashion of a wine cask. When we 
reached this delectable instrument one end of it was resting on 
a stone by the roadside and the other was placed to the mouth 
of a harmless looking idiot, who with distended eyes and 
cheeks, and veins in face and neck that looked as though they 
would burst with an additional pound of pressure, was endan- 
gering his life by trying to torture us out of a few centissimi. I 
have often heard of a person's eyes "bugging" out, but I never 
fully realized the meaning of it till I saw this Swiss chap strain- 
ing to get music out of an Alpine horn. Farther along we 
came to a little fellow worrying with one, and the effort struck 
us as so hazardous to the life and happiness of the boy that he 
reaped no mean harvest of coppers thai day. The effort to 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. I4I 

hold up the cumbersome instrument, and get a noise out of it, 
struck us as calculate^ to cripple him for life, and we felt it 
well to begin an endowment fund for his benefit. If a power- 
ful air machine had been at work pumping wind into his cheeks 
they could not have puffed out worse than they did as he stood 
there by the roadside heaving away, with his protruding eyes 
painfully cast towards the carriages in mute appeals for succor. 
But we got plenty of this thing during the day, the performer 
being located, sometimes, where the echo and re-echo were 
quite effective. I would guess that some of these ponderous 
things, when moved, are put upon wheels, and that they are 
carted from point to point, including the long, funnel shaped 
box into which the large ends of some of them are inserted to 
increase the volume of their noise. 

The roadside was lined -with girls knittng lace, sitting bare- 
headed in the sun, and who offered the product of their labors 
at low prices, and the occupants of the carriages were besieged 
by the women and little girls who held up milk, cherries and 
flowers for sale. At one place where there were two miles of 
steep ascent ahead of us, a whole gang of boys rushed out, 
each with a brush of green bushes in one hand and a three- 
sided block of wood in the other. The block they hung on one 
side of the carriage to be used as a "chock" when we stopped 
to let the horses "blow," and then began killing flies upon the 
horses. In this manner they went a long way up the hill 
with us, when they stopped and held out their hats for pay, 
backed up by the impertinent demand of the drivers in their 
behalf. And this is one of the thousand and one devices to ex- 
tort money from tourists. 

We passed many saw-mills on the way. The water power is 
excellent, but the mills are of primitive design and construc- 
tion. I would guess that in summer time, when the days are 
at the longest, they might saw up one log a day if all the power 
was turned on and the mill put to its full capacity. The sawyer 
can very easily wait upon the mill and work in his crop at the 
same time, the former making calls upon him just about often 
enough to rest him by varying the labor. I presume when he 
has no work to do in the fields he can set the saw and go home 



14"? THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

and split the kindling, or help his wife peel the potatoes, while 
it is slowly hunting the other end of the log. 

I had gotten just this far when I was called to the front win- 
dow by blasts from a band of music, and on looking out saw a 
procession from one canton marching by on its way to the 
ground where they have their wrestling matches. In front 
were the straggling boys, then the band ; next, three men 
dressed in acrobatic costumes, carrying ancient war maces ; a 
man attired as a bear ; seven sheep ornamented with wreaths of 
evergreens, led by boys ; a straggling body of countrymen ; 
and, bringing up the rear, a dozen or more athletes in proper 
attire for the coming contest. Sunday as it was, the sight 
was too much for me, and I rushed out to go and see 
the thing done, but a game foot prevented my walking, and I 
gave it up. I understand that often as many as four hundred 
men from various cantons collect here and engage in these 
wrestling contests, nearly every one and his family going to 
witness them. 

The season for tourists in Switzerland is fast drawing to a 
close, and a week from now they will begin to turn their faces 
homeward. To give you an idea of the great number now here, 
I will state that during our drive yesterday, we .met and passed 
one hundred and eleven vehicles containing visitors, with an 
average of four persons to each, and this did not include our 
own caravan. This afternoon we leave this place, after a de- 
lightful sojourn, for another portion of the mountains — all of 
us except one young man taken sick at Geneva, and who must 
be left here to recover, renewed in health and spirits. We 
have almost forgotten the heat and dust and fleas of Italy and 
Naples, and hope to entirely forget them before we sail for 
home. 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 143 



LETTER XXL 



Return to Berne and the Bear Pits- Departure for Interlaken— On Lake Brienze — 
Geisstoach Falls an I the magnificent hotel there— Illumination of the Falls 
at night— Sunday night concert — Across Lake Brienze and a carriage ride 
over Brunig Pass— A comparison of the four Passes— Lake Lucerne— A night 
upon the Alps— Dizzy ride up there— Sunrise on the Alps— Trouble over the 
Alpine horn— Righi Kulm Tour of the Lake and a visit to the spot where 
Tell sent the arrow through the small apple— Why we like Switzerland—Loss 
of life among the glaciers. 

Lucerne, Switzerland, August 26, 1879. 

The "little one" wrote a part of a letter to her mother the 
other clay — she is not guilty of writing a full letter often — and 
in describing our journey from Pisa to Milan left out Genoa en- 
tirely, not even mentioning the Campo Santo there, where may 
be seen, in my humble estimation, the finest statuary, by very 
great odds, in all Europe. Well, I think I did the same thing 
to you in my letter from Interlaken, when I jumped from Fri- 
bourg to that place, and omitted to say one word about Berne, 
the Capital of Switzerland. I merely go back and refer to it 
now to show we did not neglect it, but that we stopped there 
three quarters of an hour, and saw the big clock perform, and 
went out to the bear pits and got gloriously taken in by three 
old spavined and dilapidated bears, with barely enough energy 
in them to eat a square meal if they had a chance. 



144 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

Leaving Interlaken Sunday afternoon by cars, we soon 
reached Lake Brienze, where a steamer was in waiting to carry 
us to Geissbach Falls, at which place we spent the night. 
From the landing the greater number of our party were carried 
up to the hotel in the cars on the inclined plane, which has 
been erected at much cost within the last year, while some of 
them exercised their limbs by walking, and a couple got lost. 
The hotel at Geissbach is perhaps to finest one in Switzerland. 
Its location would seem to justify the greater outlay of money 
in its erection. The view it commands is, in many respects, 
the most attractive Ave have seen in this country where tame 
views are the exception. Below lies the beautiful lake, walled 
in by mountains, stretching back upon one side to Interlaken 
and nearly meeting the one beyond, and on the Other turni g 
gently to the right until it seems to end in the very midst of 
imposing peaks. Above comes dashing down the falls in a suc- 
cession of startling leaps, as though the waters would dash into 
the very windows of the house, and with a roar that becomes 
agreeable after a while and lulls you to sleep when you retire 
for the night. 

The hotel was crowded, and three of us occupied a large 
room twenty-four steps above all the other floors in the centre 
dome of the building, the English-speaking chambermaid assur- 
ing us that we might consider ourselves lucky in getting No. 
218, as it afforded the best view, while many of the guests oc- 
cupied cots in obscure rooms, and the servants were sleeping 
about on the floor. But at dinner that night and breakfast the 
next morning, we were expeditiously served by pretty Swiss 
girls, all neatly dressed in the fancy costume of the country. I 
don't know that the viands were any better than we have beer* 
indulging in along the route, but our people seemed to enjoy 
them to a greater extent. Here we met, for the first time, a 
set of people who could do more staring than we have been 
guilty of, and the thing becomes so marked and ill-bred that a 
few of us met it by borrowing all the eye glasses within reach, 
and deliberately rising in our seats at the table and grotesquely 
squinting at the more obnoxious ones at the other tables. That 
proceeding about squelched them. If it had not we would 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 45 

probably have resorted to some other device more effective. 
At half-past 9 that night, upon the ringing of the bell, we as- 
sembled on the piazzas and the amphitheater to witness the illu- 
mination of the falls. Two rockets were sent up the mountain, 
which spent their force and exploded far short of the upper cas- 
cade, when there burst upon our vision a most bewitching scene 
as, one after another, all the cascades flashed into a blaze of 
red, green and blue, and came down the mountain as if so much 
colored liquid fire. Seen in places through the pines which par- 
tially obscured the falls, and which took on the colors thrown 
upon the water, the effect was pleasing in the extreme. Many 
tourists ran over to Geissbach from Interlaken and the villages 
along- the banks, to witness the illumination and return after it is 
over. Later, there was a concert in the reception room, and 
some of those who can't hold a foot still when music is going, 
were about to 'go upon the floor and pitch into a waltz, when 
they were reminded it was still the Sabbath day, even though 
in Switzerland, where that day does not worry them more than 
any other. 

The next morning, after breakfast and a ride down the dizzy 
incline, we took a steamer and crossed the lake to Brienz, where 
we were loaded into carriages and driven over the Brunig Pass, 
which our own unpretentious itinerary tells us is, in some re- 
spects, ahead of the others we had seen. Perhaps had we crossed 
it first we would have thought so ourselves, but, as it is, we call 
in question the authority quoted. But, crossing the Alps four 
times in about that many weeks, is calculated to deaden our 
appreciation for the scenery they present, and I am not pre- 
pared to question that, had we seen the Brunig Pass first, we 
may have accorded it the palm. My conviction is that the 
Simplon beats them all, though the Tete Noir is not far behind. 
We saw each end of the road leading over the St. Bernard 
Pass, and at Grindelwald I put my arms around the neck of the 
famous mammoth St. Bernard dog that made a stir at Paris and 
was laden with premiums there, but we gave the pass the go-by, 
and will re-read Bulwer when v/e go home. 

Reaching Lake Lucerne, or "Lake of the Four Cantons," as 
they call it here, we again took steamer for Lucerne, having 
19 



I46 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

passed, during our carriage drive, two small lakes nestling among 
the mountains, and whose waters gave out an emerald green 
in the noon day sunshine- On reaching Lucerne we were de- 
layed nearly an hour, waiting for a steamer to carry us to Vitz- 
nau, the one that was to have taken us having already gone. 
It was but three-quarters of an hour's run over there, but the 
' sun's rays were only seen on the tallest peaks when we reached 
Vitznau and took the cars up the frightful ascent which leads to 
the summit of Righi Kulm. It had been planned that we should 
get there in time to see the sun set, but, as that luminary did 
not behave excellently well in its concluding performances, and, 
as night shut out the frightful views in our first ride up towards 
the moon, it was well enough the delay occurred. We could 
hardly have gone up there in broad daylight except under a 
tremor of agitation from the beginning to the end. As we 
ascended the atmosphere gradually grew colder, and when, at 
last, after an hour and a half of honest shivering, we stepped 
out of the cars into a cold, dense cloud, we felt that winter was 
fast approaching, and would not have been surprised on seeing 
ice in our rooms. We went in to dinner at nine* and finished at 
ten, went to bed in the monster hotel, crowded with people, 
dreading the sounds of the Alpine horn that was to awake us 
on the morrow to see the sun rise over the Alps. 

I go fishing occasionally when at home, and that I may 
awake early for a good start, I set the alarm of the clock upon 
the hour I want to get out of bed. The next morning I gener- 
ally catch myself awake, listening for the thing to go off. So 
it was with that awful Alpine horn. I awoke before its misera- 
ble tooting resounded through the corridors of the hotel. I 
guess the late dinner — and I may add the hearty one — had given 
me the night mare, for I had kicked off the stubby feather bed 
they use in this country for covering, and was about half frozen. 
Getting up to re-adjust my chunk of feathers, I looked out the 
window, and the clouds around looked so unpropitious I hoped 
the ceremony of arousing the guests would be omitted, and 
that I might fallinto a more peaceful slumber. I had some 
difficulty making up my mind how to utilize the feathers. I 
put the package across my lower extremities, and that left my 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 147 

body exposed. I then brought it up to my neck, and my legs 
felt the night breeze. I put it across the centre of my body, 
and consequently took a chill at both ends. Finally I compro- 
mised the matter by curling up like a grub worm and getting 
entirely under the thing, Ihad barely accomplished the feat when 
I heard the faint sounds of the horn in the adjoining hotel, and 
in less than five minutes thereafter it burst loose in the halls 
around us, and aroused the soundest sleeper of them all. To 
add to the noise many of us jumped out of bed, and, opening 
our doors, yelled to the top of our voices. Not even one of 
the Seven Sleepers could have slumbered in that fuss. It was 
very different from the scene I had read an entertaining account 
of in the London Telegraph a few days before. The able 
writer was talking about Englishmen, I presume, for he spoke 
of this uncomfortable morning proceeding as being a quiet and 
sombre one. There was nothing quiet about our party from 
first to last, for we got out upon the highest point of Righi 
Kulm in all sorts of garbs, and. toilets in every stage of com- 
pletion compatible with respectability and the Norwegian blasts 
that whistled about us, We astonished the two or three hundred 
other tourists around us with our clatter. 

When we first came out the sky was overcast with dark look- 
ing clouds, and the prospect was discouraging, but as the hour 
for sunrise approached the clouds immediately overhead dis- 
solved into thin mist and gradually floated away, while a long 
line opened just above the horizon on the east, through which 
old Sol cast his rays upon the fleecy billows in the west and gave 
us the first promise of a glorious feast. Gradually he painted and 
tinted cloud after cloud, illuminated the entire heavens in gor- 
geous hues of mellow and ever changing colors. Then, 
with a gentle brush, he touched up the snow-capped peaks of 
the Burnese Alps, moving slowly down their sides and lighting 
up the deep valleys and dark gorges in his progress till there 
lay out before us a picture the memory of which we will carry 
to the grave. I have seen more sublime illumination of the 
heavens from my own gallery in Vicksburg, looking westward, 
in the afternoon after a summer shower, by far, than I have seen 
in this brief tour in Europe, and I apprehend it would be the 



I48 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

same if I lived even in " sunny Italy " tc the end of my days; 
but here, on Righi Kulm, where the effect is aided by a pano- 
rama of a thousand peaks, lying within a circle of three hun • 
dred miles, and where the beauties are outlined to a greater 
extent upon the mountains than upon the sky, it is merely true 
to say that I have seen nothing in all my life to compare to it, 
Once, standing in a pass over one of the tall ranges in South- 
western Colorado, looking towards the Rockies in Utah, I was 
nearly dazed with the grandeur of the view, but in that case 
the sky was clear and the scene was unaided by pictures in the 
heavens, as the sun sank to rest for the day. So we were fortu- 
nate in our visit to Righi Kulm, as we have been fortunate in 
all our trip through Switzerland. Perhaps no one has had 
greater luck in this respect than have we. 

After an early breakfast we came down the mountain and 
nearly held our breath as we crossed the deep gorges or ran near 
the edge of a precipice. A few of us took a steamer and came 
back direct to this place, the others making a circular tour of 
the lake and returning here in the afternoon. They passed 
by spots pointed out as places where Gessler and Tell figured, 
and landing once walked two miles to the ground where Tell 
stood when he knocked the pigmy Swiss apple off the head of 
the faithful boy — a boy who should be awarded the larger share 
of the honor. I said if there was a more handsome lake than 
Lake Geneva I wanted to see it and quit. Well, I have seen 
Lake Lucerne and close the chapter. I do not see how its su- 
perior in loveliness can exist. 

To-night we attend another concert, and to-morrow start for 
Paris, stopping a few hours at Bale to see some more churches 
to mix with the mountains and the lakes. I shall depart from 
enchanting Switzerland with feelings of great regret. Our stay 
has been one continual pleasure feast. We like Switzerland 
ever so much. We like her for her pure mountain air ; her 
exquisite scenery and ruddy-cheeked, brown-armed women ; 
the honest-looking, cheerful faces we see; the politeness and 
kindness we meet on every hand; her lovely lakes mirroring 
back the mountain and the clouds above them, and her clear, 
pure water that comes dashing down into the green and fertile 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 149 

valleys from the eternal snows of the Alps. All these give a 
charm to Switzerland, and under it no wonder that her frugal 
people can find no other home which pleases them so well. 

I was mistaken about the young Bostonian having lost his life 
on Mont Blanc a few days prior to our visit to Chamounix. It 
was on the Matterhorn where he fell a victim to his adventurous 
spirit. And on the same day a guide, who could not resist the 
big fee, and who attempted to conduct a party when he was 
ailing, died alone and unattended at the rude station on the 
same mountain. Since leaving Chamounix, however, a tourist 
fell down one of the glaciers near where our party ascended, 
and his body was recovered the next day hundreds of feet below, 
bruised and lacerated in the most shocking manner. I would 
much rather take a comfortable position and admire from afar the 
glaciers of Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, the Wetterhorn, Mer de 
Glace, and the hundreds of others we have seen, than to go 
climbing, and scratching, and digging my way up their treacher- 
ous snows and icy sides, liable at any moment to slip, only to 
find a stopping place, a shapeless mass, a thousand feet down 
some frightful chasm that never sees the light of day. The 
more modest tramps satisfy my ambition, with much less prob- 
ability that an untimely death in Switzerland will require an 
early settlement of my estate. 



I =>0 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 



LETTER XXII. 



Leaving Luzerne— Good-bye Switzerland— The last look at the .Alps— Halt at Bale 
—Protestant Church there and its curious clock faces— Buying Ribbons— A 
pleasant all night ride in the cars— Arrival in Paris— What we saw there 
and the many places of note we visited— The French we learned in the 
Ornni busses — Leaving Europe with many longings, and yearnings to come 
again— Some of our party left behind. 

Paris, September i, 1879. 

As I wrote you we would do, we left Lucerne Wednesday 
morning and soon put the beautiful lakes and mountains of 
Switzerland behind us. Now and then as we sped on our journey, 
peaks that had been familiar to us in our short stay among 
them would come into view for a moment or so, and it was so 
natural to wave our hands towards them as though bidding 
farewell to cherished friends who stood watching our departure. 
Still, we could not see a single change in the cold face of the 
immovable Jungfrau as we looked upon her in the distance for 
the last time before darting into a long tunnel that led tc a val- 
ley from which we saw the mountains no more. It is well these 
mountains can not have feelings like human beings, for in the 
event they could have they would be continually in painful 
sympathy with loving friends taking their eternal leave. I am 
glad it is all the same to Jungfrau whether we laugh or whether 
we cry under the shadow of her snow-capped head, and I love 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 5' I 

her just as though I could see the cold tears streaming down 
her face because I have turned my back upon her and my face 
towards the sea. 

We changed cars at Bale, and staid there four hours before 
we took the express train for an all night's ride to Paris. Of 
course we went to see the Protestant Church there. It does 
not come up to many of the Cathedrals we have visited, but it 
is put down in the guide books of our party as the finest Protes- 
tant Church in existence, and the museum connected with it has 
many rare and curious relics, some of them very old. Among 
them is the face of an ancient clock tower once overlooking the 
town across the river Rhine, and put up there to make faces at 
the people over the way, with whom the Bale 'folks had had a 
little falling out and for whom they desired to express their 
contempt in this way. The indignant dwellers over the Rhine 
got up a counter mouth maker, and thus the people were happy 
in being able to make ugly faces at their neighbors by proxy. 
They differed from many folks of the present time in that they 
did not make faces behind each other's backs, but stood out 
fairly and squarely and did their grinning openly and above 
board. Only one of those curious pieces of mechanism has 
been preserved. That one will run out its long, red tongue, 
and roll its eyes at you as you go looking at the other curi- 
osities in the room in which it hung. Well, -it was a harmless 
way of venting spleen, and it is a pity more persons in those 
days did not resort to it. 

The organ was the handsomest one we had seen, and we had 
a desire to hear it play, but the organist had the key in his 
pocket and he could not be found. The city was very clean, 
reminding us of some of the towns in Holland, and the streets 
appeared almost deserted. Ribbons constitute one of the chief 
products of the place, and are cheap there. It would have 
amused you to see the "little one," and another lady with a 
weakness for bright neckties, going hurriedly through two 
large basketsful of remnants in search of the pretty patterns, 
while in motal fear the train would go off and leave them a mile 
away. If you have ever seen an active old hen with one chicken 
in a pile of loose straw, scratching vigorously for a runaway bug, 



152 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

you may form a mild conception of the manner in which they 
made the pieces fly. The girl who waited on them spoke Hot- 
tentot to us, and we jabbered Potawotamie to her, and in our 
efforts to make each other understand, increased the chances of 
being left behind. After buying a few pieces which proved to 
be not near so pretty as many that were cast aside, we darted 
out of the shop and fairly ran to the hotel to find on gettiug 
there that we had a full half hour to spare. 

And this was our last transaction in Switzerland, for in less 
than two hours we had crossed into France and were huddled 
up in the depot on the border with our hand luggage waiting 
for the revenue officers to see if we intended smuggling a ton or 
so of cigars into the French Republic. The examination, as 
all others in our case have been, was a mere formal affair, and 
the talismanic chalk mark was placed upon many of our 
packages without any inspection whatever. The fact that we 
are a party of American tourists may do away with any sus- 
picion that we might be lugging around contraband goods as a 
matter of speculation. Our night ride was not uncomfortable. 
The conductor had succeeded in getting permission for only 
four to ride in a section, instead of eight, which they comfortably 
hold, and this arrangement permitted us to lie down on the 
seats and sleep comfortably well, so that on arriving here we 
were not worn out and sleepy, but in fair trim for a good break- 
fast and the succeeding eight hours ride over the city, which 
followed. 

I am worse put to it in the matter of writing a letter about 
Paris than I was about Rome. It is apparently so near home 
and the ground has been so thoroughly plowed that I feel I 
could not get up a letter in hurriedly passing through it, that 
would be news to you. In the belief that you may become 
somewhat interested in the movements of our party, through 
my hastily written letters, I will say that on arriving here we 
found the hotel named in our itinerary so nearly full that about 
one-half of the number had to be sent to another. I fell in with 
the latter party and we went to the Hotel d' Albe, on the 
Champs Elysees, not far from the Arch of Triumph. In less 
than two hours after our arrival Ave were in the big carriages 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 153 

which they use here for hauling around tourists, driving through 
the streets of Paris, seeing the sights that were deemed most 
likely to entertain us — getting out and going through those 
buildings whose interior we desired and > had time to see. To 
give you an idea of that one day's work, I will tell you we 
visited and passed through the churches ot St. Vincent de Paul 
and Notre Dame, Chaumont Park, Piere la Chaise Cemetery, 
Botanical and Zoological Gardens, the Morgue, and the Luxem- 
bourg galleries and gardens. We drove through miles of 
boulevards and streets, and among the long list of objects of 
interest, and passed the bastile column which marks the site 
of the famous prison of that name, Palace of Justice, Chamber 
of Commerce, Grand Hotel, the Obelisk, brought from Egypt, 
the horse butcheries, Pantheon, the Louvre, the church con- 
taining the bell which rang out the signal for the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew, ruins of the Tuileries, the handsome shops 
along the Rue de Rivoli, and then through the Communists' 
quarters, and up the Champs Elysees home to a six o'clock 
dinner. Thus you see we did a big day's work and saw perhaps 
much more than we would have seen in a whole week unaided 
by a conductor, the junior Mr. Gaze himself, who is on the go 
every day of the tourist season. 

During our walk over the 112 acres, and among the 16,000 
tombs of the Chaumont Cemetery, we were permitted to see the 
resting places of many famous men, among them quite a num- 
ber who figured conspicuously with, and in the time of, the 
first Napoleon. At a point called Napoleon's corner there is a 
cluster of some of his leading generals and statesmen. The tomb of 
Thiers, was pointed out, and we were told of the 50,000 people 
who followed his remains, and that the largest wreath among the 
symbols of mourning was the contribution of Americans resi- 
dent here. Of course-, we saw the tomb of Heloise and Abe- 
lard, and had the history of their devotion, their secret marriage, 
their separation, their hopeless constancy and their final death 
and burial here, detailed to us. . But if those people looked 
anything like the two figures lying on top of the tomb, and 
which, no doubt, were intended to represent this most unfor- 
tunate pair ot lovers, then I am unable to account for the at- 

20 



1 54 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVANS 

tachment on an)- other ground than that it was Hobson's choice 
with them. Still the sculptor may have done his work awk- 
wardly, and in view of the probability that he did so, many 
touching things have been written about this loving pair, and 
to which I refer you for further particulars. 

On the top of this cemetery we had our first panoramic view 
of the city — we have had many since — and had pointed out to us 
places of interest, especially those associated with the taking of 
the city by the Prussians and the subsequent, action of the Com- 
munists. Aside from the history of the men entombed there, 
and the fact that the Communists more than once sought refuge 
there and invited the shots which mark many of the tombs, this 
cemetery is not at all impressive. The monuments are, for 
the most part, plain and unobtrusive, and hung about with a 
profusion of wreaths and immortelles similar to the decorations 
in the cemeteries in New Orleans. 

We have been to the Grand Opera House and taken a sweat 
bath in that oven, while trying to stay out the first act of Faust, 
equal to the one we took around the crater of Vesuvius. And 
we were inveigled into the Jardin Mabille, and while there saw 
a little of the extravagant dance which has never flourished in 
our own country except in the lower dens, but which is the 
leading feature ol this famous garden on the Avenue Montague, 
near the Champs Elysees. The place was not crowded the 
night w T e were there, and people were quietly strolling about 
the lovely grounds or seated at the tables taking refreshments, 
Directly after our entrance the band struck up with a very lively 
quadrille, when two couples took position on a part of the 
floored space around the music stand, and a big ring of specta- 
tors gathering around them, the fun began. It was but a minute 
or two before one of the female dancers, while spinning around 
near the surrounding circle, kicked the hat off the tallest man 
within reach, and then deliberately put her foot upon the shoul- 
der of another, while the other female dancer took her right 
foot in her hand, (I am certain as to the foot for I was there 
and saw it), and holding it up before her face leisurely inspected 
the nicely fitting shoe which encased it. And yet when the 
jiiusic ceased and the crowd, temporarily assembled around the 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 155 

dancers, had scattered about over the garden, there could be 
seen nothing to indicate that the Jardin Mabille might not be 
visited by the most fastidious person. 

We have been to the great Hippodrome and the panorama of. 
the Siege of Paris, a most life-like and impressive scene, worth 
much trouble and money to see. The imitations of it, exhibited 
in America, barely give one an idea of the magnificence of this. 
We have been out to Versailles and seen the gardens and gjo- 
rious avenues, ,and fed the fish in the basins; have gone through 
the palace and seen the rich trappings of royalty, the rooms 
they occupied, the beds they stretched their legs upon, and in 
which they slept the sleep which brought but little refreshment ; 
the balcony upon which Maria Antoinette appeared with her 
first infant child in the vain hope of appeasing the mob who had 
come to carry her to the guillotine ; the room where she was 
finally captured and from which she was taken to her doom ; 
the room prepared for the reception of Queen Victoria on the 
occasion of her visit to France, and the gorgeous bed on which 
that lady declined to sleep on account of some scandal connect- 
ed with it, or because it was once occupied by the excellent and 
ill-used Josephine, and the conscientious Queen desired to ex- 
press her disapproval of the whole matter by declining the prof- 
fered luxury, and going off to St. Cloud and spending the nights 
with the Empress Eugenie. 

We have seen the places where stood the guillotines and fell 
the heads during the revolutions which have fallen upon the 
excitable people of France, and where, in all probability, the 
same scenes will be re-enacted. We have been to the Louvre, 
and tried hard to see the seven miles of pictures, the acres of 
statuary and the tens of thousands of rare curiosities in that 
world-renowned building, but we could not do it, even in weeks, 
with perfect satisfaction. We have seen Paris, in balmy 
weather, by gas light, and will never cease wondering where -all 
the people come from who throng its brilliant streets and crowd 
about the cafes that, wherever you may be, are before you, 
behind, and upon either side, ablaze with gas when night i s 
upon the city. We have gazed down the street* leading up to 
the Grand Opera, and have been nearly dazed by the electric 



1$6 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'? 

lights which absolutely turn night into day. We have been to 
the great stores of the Palais Royal, the Louvre and the Bon 
Marsche, and have seen the army of employes within them, 
bus)', as though their very lives depended upon rapid action. 

But there is one place we have never seen, and that is Com 
plet. We have not seen it, because every time we hailed an 
omnibus having that name upon it the driver sitting perched 
upon top with his legs encased in a leather house, looked at us 
contemptuously and drove on. This is not original. I give it 
as told by a New Englander, who, returning to h'"s native land 
and naming the places he had seen, gave this as a place he had 
not seen. Every one who visits Paris soon learns that Complet 
means that the vehicle has its complement of passengers inside 
and. out, and that when the word appears over the door he will 
not be allowed to even put his foot on the platform for love or 
money. There is no chance of getting squeezed in an omnibus 
in Paris. Just so many are allowed on top, so many on the in- 
side, and four on the rear platform. On the inside you pay six 
cents, and half that for a seat on top. If the inside and top are- 
full you must stand on the platform, if that has not four, and 
you pay six cents for that position. But if a passenger vacates a 
seat, either above or below, by getting off, you may take it. I 
have been in an omnibus but once, and I give you what I then 
learned, but I hailed half a dozen with the word "complet" 
upon them, before I found out why the plaguey things wouldn't 
stop for me. So there is one land under the sun where omni- 
busses may get full. It never occurs in our own glorious cli- 
mate, America. 

We learn that since our departure from Naples, Vesuvius has 
been in active eruption. The sight of it to one who had never 
witnessed it, I have no doubt, would be a grand one ; still, I 
doubt, as such action would prevent our closely approaching the 
crater, whether *it would impress us more than we were im- 
pressed at the time of our visit. If it could have been quiet 
till we went up there and fearlessly dallied with her fires, and 
then raised Cain for our special benefit, we would have been 
doubly favored. The inhabitants were looking for some demon- 
strations of the restless mountain when we were there, and pre- 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE.. ?57 

dieted a display within ten days. Upon what basis they made 
their calculations I am not able to state. 

Those of us who are to take the Glasgow steamer on the 4th, 
will leave here to-night and be back in London by noon to mor- 
row. Perhaps the chief source of regret will be the short time 
allowed by the tour to that city. London is not a pretty place, 
but there are very many places within it one would like to see. 
Large numbers of our party will remain behind, some to follow 
us by the next steamer, others later, while a few will remain 
in Europe for months or more and leisurely see what is on their 
individual programmes. Those of us who were so miserably 
sick on coming over already begin to feel an uncomfortable sens- 
ation in the stomach, and will be fully prepared on getting out 
to sea to throw up a world of Jonahs. I hope to have lucid 
intervals often enough and of sufficient duration to close this 
chapter of travels while aboard the ship, and in that hope I may 
make this my last letter bearing date in Europe. If I did not 
leave here in the belief that I would come back some day, I 
should quit very reluctantly indeed, for there is much in this 
country to see, and the many pleasant recollections of the jour- 
ney will tend greatly towards mitigating the terrors- of the sea, 
if they do not entirely cause me to forget the heavings of my 
stomach. I have changed my mind as to not braving the sea 
again to look at Europe. Sea sickness is a bitter dose but I 
would endure it a^ain to sjet back here. 



• 58 THE BIG AMERICAS' CARAVAN'S 



LETTER XXIII. 



Paris to London— Smooth channel and no sea sickness Two days in London- 
Comparison between that city and Paris— Both behind our country in Fine 
Stores- On to Glasgow — A. day of shopping there — Down to the Steamer and 
out to sea — Description of the passage — Some tumbling upon the briny deep 
— The arrival at home and the passage Lhi'ough the quarantine and Custom 
House — The meeting of friends. 

New York, September 14, 1879. 

The good ship Circassia lies quiet at anchor at the quarantine 
station in New York Harbor. The great engines which have 
been thundering away at the immense screw that sped us home- 
ward, without rest or cessation for ten days and nights, have 
ceased at last, and the repose which seems to have'come to our 
ship is grateful to us all. So accustomed had we become to the 
never ceasing jar of the power around us that when, at dinner, 
the steam was shut off, and the wheel ceased to revolve, many 
jumped to their feet with a look of surprise, and sometimes fear 
* in their faces, exclaiming, "the engines have stopped !" as 
though some calamity had befallen us. We have signalled for the 
health officer, and while we gently rock upon the kindly swells 
of the ocean here in the harbor, we await the coming of this 
officer. We have been upon deck all day when the rain did not 
compel us to seek cover below, descanting upon the land dimly 
seen through the mist here and there, and admiring the great 
concourse of vessels going out and coming in from sea. Those 
of us who are not still busy with trunks and valises, trying to 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 159 

bury dutiable articles beyond the keen eyes of the revenue officer, 
are all huddled about over the commodious decks, taking our 
last chat together, and feeling some pain in view of the approach- 
ing separation, after so long and entertaining a journey together. 
Our associations have, in the main, been pleasant, and we have 
made acquaintances and formed attachments it will cause a pang- 
to interrupt by separation. In some cases the attachment has 
been of such a character that will result in binding the parties 
together for life, and if, in their cases, the journey henceforth 
be a smooth one, they will have additional reason to be thank- 
ful Providence directed them on this tour. 

The Government boat lies alongside, and the doctor has 
climbed up the side of our big ship, accompanied by his assist- 
ants, bringing along the vessels and apparatus with which to 
fumigate the hold when his inspection is over. He h?s shaken 
hands familiarly with our odd-looking, but pleasant, doctor, and 
now stands carefully scrutinizing the faces of the three hundred 
men, women and children from the steerage as they marched 
before him. But we have a clean bill of health, and he can find 
no pestilence or contagious malady in the appearance of any of 
them. The hatches are now shut down and the process of fumi- 
gation begun. We hear a rattle and a gurgling sound below 
as the mess fumes and stews in that pent up place. Directly 
the doctor and his assistants go briskly down the steps to their 
own wee steamer, which soon darts away to a French sailing 
ship, just in, and also awaiting his inspection. Our engines re- 
sume their labor, and we move slowly towards the city. As 
we near the Anchor Line's pier we see it crowded with people, 
and the waving of handkerchiefs soon begins. Friends begin 
to recognize each other, and at last, when we have come along- 
side the pier, and tied up our floating home, and run out the 
gangway, there is a rush in the meeting of loving ones that is 
touching even to those of us whose friends are a thousand miles 
or more away. But in the throng I do not see the sad face of 
the widowed woman, whose genial and excellent husband laid 
away his life in Germany. How our hearts go out to her in her 
sorrow, that of all our party he can not return for the happy 
greeting which is in store ior us, 



l6o THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

\ 

Our great quantity of baggage has gone out upon the dock, 
and, as the night comes on, it has been inspected, sometimes 
with feeble rigor, and, at others, with a haste and a suspicious 
indifference as to the contents of the packages that smack loudly 
of the influence that a little grease has been used upon the ma- 
chine, and the proper revenues upon our stuff diverted into an- 
other channel. In truth and in fact, a body of blind and deaf 
passengers could hardly go through the New York Custom 
House, on a Sunday afternoon, without becoming aware of the 
ease with which returning voyagers can pass through it, if they 
are inclined to swear to a lie, and are then thoughtful enough 
to put a little money where it will do the most good. And it is 
wonderful how many of us were inclined to put the most favor- 
able construction for ourselves upon the oath to construe mer- 
chandise into wearing apparel, and to forget that we ever had 
bought a present for a friend. The desire to cheat the Govern- 
ment out of its legal revenue seems to afflict the majority of Amer- 
icans, and there are very few who come from Europe who do 
not, in some way, try to evade the payment of duties fixed by 
law. I feel that a wolul source of sin will be obliterated if it 
should ever come to pass that our country will luxuriate in free 
trade. There were a few Romans in our party who conscien- 
tiously reported everything they had bought. Among these 
was a minister who even declined to swear to his list because he 
had forgotten all his trivial purchases, or what they cost, but, 
upon opening his trunk, took out every article and carried them 
all to the chief officer. for inspection and valuation, who, to his 
credit, be it said, returned them without assessment. The gen- 
tle minister could lie down that night with a clear conscience, 
which, I fear, not man}' of his companions could have. I shall 
remember his quiet, beautiful face to the last of my life. And 
there is perhaps not one of our large party who will not always 
bear pleasing recollections of this worthy man and his modest, 
devoted and winning wife. 

I closed my last letter to you at Paris. A day or two there- 
after we took the night train for London, which place we reached 
near noon the next day, after so remarkable a thing as to cross 
the channel without rough weather, and consequently no incon- 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. l6l 

venience from sea-sickness. The rains had ceased about three 
days before in England, and we had clear and cheerful weather 
while in London. It was so rare to those people that you could 
not enter a store and buy the most trivial article and hurry out 
without some allusion being made to the happy change. We 
staid in this city until the night of the second day, and then took 
the express train for Glasgow. Upon the whole, our party 
liked London better than Paris. It is almost a waste of Ian- ^ 
guage to say it is a wonderful city. I would hazard the guess that 
it does more business in one day than Paris does in a week, and 
for the chance purchaser at retail, its stocks are more ample and 
prices lower. There are enchanting streets, beautiful drives, 
and lovely parks in Paris, with ever so many nice fountains ; and 
at night the city is ablaze with gas, while the seekers of pleas- 
ure swarm the streets and cafes till the wonder seems to be how 
these myriads can afford the time and the money thus thrown 
away. But when you are in London there is an appearance of 
solidity around you, and an attention to the more serious con- 
cerns of life which are not visible in Paris. Both are interesting 
cities, but if a person could see one and not the other I feel that 
he would make a mistake if he should select Paris over London. £ 
I may add here that I was in all the noted retail establishments 
in both places, but I saw nothing equaling those of Stewart in 
New York; Field, Lciter & Co., Chicago ; and Shillito, in Cin- 
cinnati. Indeed, I saw many things in Europe inferior to like 
things in our own country. I am aware it is not the usual style 
to make such an assertion, still I can not avoid it and approxi- 
mate the truth. 

We spent nearly the entire day in Glasgow. One would have 
supposed that in our long round, all purchases would have al- 
ready been made, but if you could have seen the bundles piling 
into the hotel from io to 3 o'clock, your guess would have been 
that shopping had been postponed for this last place. As we 
left for the cars to carry us to our ship at Greenoch, nearly every 
member of the party looked like a delivery messenger loaded 
down to the guards with packages. 

As we tumbled out of the cars on the wharf at Greenoch, 
there lay our ship at anchor in the harbor, and alongside the 
21 



l62 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

dock, close by, bobbed up and down the little steamer that was 
to carry us out to the big one. It was the first time we fully 
realized that we were quitting Europe and starting on our jour- 
ney homeward. In a few minutes we were transferred to the 
vessel, and at once began searching for our respective rooms. 
The Circassia is a much larger ship, being nearly 450 feet long, 
and newer and a great deal cleaner than the Anchoria, which 
took us over, and the rooms gave general satisfaction. I had 
the same three room-mates returning I had going over, two of 
whom had been in my section, and with whom I had roomed 
at the hotels on the tour, and, of course, we harmonized. There 
were about two hundred and twenty cabin passengers, all of 
whom but about twenty belonged to our band, being composed 
of members from all five of the sections. The Swiss section and 
the third, which started out from London a week before we did, 
had mostly gone home in preceding ships, but some of them 
had loitered behind to accompany us. We left many in Europe 
to straggle along home at odd times during the next twelve 
months, as inclination and circumstances dictate. 

The weather was delightful when the bow was pointed sea- 
ward, and we sped through the placid waters that lie between 
the highlands at Greeficch and for many miles towards Moville, 
and there were no sea-sick persons that night, albeit, at one 
time, just before the dawn of day, we passed through some 
rough water, and the ship did some uncomfortable rolling. At 

%> Moville, next morning, we took on many of our three hundred 
steerage* passengers, and further out many of our own party, 
who had taken a run through Ireland, ar.d joined us at a place 
I do not now remember. This second day the weather was 
kind to us, but about 12 o'clock that night there came up a 
blow, which made things lively for us. The ship was lightly 

-laden with iron and sugar, which, lying at the very bottom, al-' 
lowed the vessel to wallow about in a fearful manner. I was 
aroused with a crashing of things about over the ship, which 
appeared as though everything was loose and being banged to 
pieces. Most of the trunks and valises had been brought down 
and set in the passages, or in the large spaces used for dining 
rooms for second class passengers, and these made pilgrimages, 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. v6% 

with every roll of the ship, through all the space allotted to 
them, and came up on the other side with a bang, as though 
they were aiming to drive through the sides of the ship. Glass- 
ware was rattling in every direction, and every article not pro- 
perly moored perambulated about in the most reckless way. 
Our clothing hanging over the iron rod running; through our „ 
room, vibrating back and forth like the pendulum of a clock 
with a long swing, while those of us lying in the berths parallel 
with the vessel, rolled from side to side like a baby rigid with 
anger, in a rocking cradle, and those lying at right angles with 
the vessel had honest work to perform to prevent their skulls 
getting cracked, as the down grade was in that direction, or to 
avoid being doubled up like a jack knife, if it was in the other, 
With my pillow upon one side and my big overcoat on the 
other, I wedged myself in and let her roll. Added to these 9 
little discomforts, we hear the billows thundering against our 
iron shell, and every now and then come crashing over the 
decks above us, as though we stood in danger of being literally 
crushed to the bottom of the sea. 

It seemed a long time till day. With daylight came men and 
nailed strips of wood around the baggage, and that trouble 
ended. The wind moderated and the rolling decreased. One 
of our party, who had retired in his clothes, got up and tried 
to wash his face. In a twinkling he shot out the door and 
tumbled up in a lump among the baggage. Hastily coming 
back with set features and a blanched face that are never mis- 
taken, he snatched' up his hat and darted up the passage of the 
saloon evidently hunting for a nice place on deck in which to 
cast up 'accounts. We heard from him afterwards that the set- 
tlement had been complete. Then another got up, the heavy 
young Boston journalist, who bunked above me. I think he 
got on both socks and one shoe, when he got white in the face 
and settled. Then he put on the other shoe, and tried to wash ^? 
with one hand, while he hung on with the other. Another 
settlement. He got his face dampened, and was trying to dry 
it with a towel, when, being for a third time required to settle, 
he gave it up as a bad job, and crawled back in his berth, which to 
his fat body filled, and he lay there comfortably. # In the mean- 



164 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

time I had gotten sick at this fellow calling- on Europe, and my 
head had been hanging ever the side of the berth, as though 
my neck was devoid of vertebra?. It was a funny time. Not 
long after this the other man, a Boston artist, declared he could 
do it. He had not been sick a moment in going over, and he 
simply had been lying there because it was not his getting up 
time. Well, he sat down on the floor and after skating two or 
three times across the room in an ungraceful and still more 
unpleasant way, in that position, managed to get on his socks; 
then looking up towards us, with mingled looks of appeals and 
apologies, said, hopelessly, "Oh, I can't stand this!" and 
dragged his limp body back into the berth. And thus lay this 
trio till noon. We were not alone. We could hear the sounds 
of distress all around us — a most woful distress, but which 
aroused scant sympathy. 

At noon, somehow, we got up and got out upon deck. I 
was awfully sick, but went on the upper deck, over the 
ladies' cabin, and laid down up there, overlooking the deck 
below, where were huddled quite a lot of ladies in their sea 
chairs, trying to get some comfort from the sea air. The waves 
had quit breaking over the ship, but we were rolling fearfully 
from side to side. At one time the indicator attached to the 
compass marked the deck as standing at an angle of forty de- 
crees, which gave us a swing from the lowest point upon one 
side to the lowest upon the other of eighty degrees ! Of course, 
walking about, except to experienced seamen, was no easy mat- 
ter, and it bothered even them. Every now and then the ladies 
below me would break from their moorings, and, sweeping across 
to the opposite side of the passway, would pile up in a confused 
mass, from which it took some time to extricate themselves. 
M"any who undertook to walk across the wet decks often wound 
up their efforts by hastily sitting down and mopping up the floor 
as they bowled away to the first permanent obstruction. One 
bio-, fine looking Scotchman, who hated to give in, sailed away 
on his back twice across the after deck, the last time shooting 
his legs through the iron railing, and wedging himself in so 
tightly it took two men to pull him out and put him on his feet 
ao-ain. Two ladies were quite badly hurt by being thrown 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 65 

down, but, upon the whole, it was quite a laughable affair. It 
cured me. After that we had no more rough sea. The weather 
was lovely and the trip a charming one. We had two most 
magnificent sunsets — the only ones we had seen since leaving 
home, and all of us forgot our sea-sickness, except to laugh 
over it. It is awful funny at all times, except when you have a 
case of it on hand. 



1 66 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN b 



LETTER XXIV 



A letter from home, the last of the series — Explanations of matters overlooked in 
former letters— Comparison of European and American railroads, mode of 
travel and living— Cost of oar round trip — Useful hints to tourists — The 
care for our lives— The polite guards at the railroad stations— Our attentive 
guides, Henry Gaze & Son — A general review of the entire trip, with its in- 
cidents and pleasures — Happy return to our own fast and free counlry. 

Vicksburg, Mississippi, November 17, 1879. 

Since my return home I have been asked many questions 
about the Tourjee Excursion in Europe, which suggests the 
propriety of one more letter. These questions mainly touched 
the subject of hotels, railroads and the propriety of traveling in 
tourists' parties. I will try and briefly meet them here. 

The hotels on the Continent which are termed first-cass are, 
as a general rule, good. They are not as gaudily furnished as 
American hotels, but I think they are quite as comfortable — 
perhaps more quiet and home-like — and are nearly always 
pleasingly clean. In the matter of beds I think they excel our 
hotels, both in comfort and cleanliness. The section to which 
I belonged occupied, first and last, nearly fifty hotels, and I 
feel sure there was no ground for complaints, in this respect, 
except, perhaps, with one or two we were quartered in at 
Paris. Even in Naples, where we found so much to grow! 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 67 

about, we had comfortable rooms and no dirt. It was read at 
one of the entertainments on board our ship coming home that 
a young lady of another section found a bed bug down there 
and she exclaimed, "Why, I declare! this is the first bed bug 
I have seen since I left-home !" 

The hotels are wonderfully quiet at night. You hear no 
thumping or thundering about below, or in the halls after eight ' 
or nine o'clock. Guests, if they come and go after that hour, 
have respect for those who may have retired, and who desire 
repose. Our own party could kick up a racket — and often did 
it — equal to that of a dozen houses full of native boarders. Bell 
calls are answered by chambermaids stationed on the various 
floors, and, as a rule, without vexatious delays. Now and then, 
as at Venice, the waiter did not dislocate his neck (they had 
male servants there)~in rushing upon you to reply; but we had 
little fault to find on this score —very much less than we would 
have in an equal number of average hotels in our own country. 
In the matter of quiet, I was reminded of the great contrast be- 
tween the two countries by spending a night at a hotel in Cairo, 
as I came South from Indiana, where the noise was so great it 
was almost impossible to drop off to sleep with the door and 
transom both tightly closed. But after midnight all employes 
at the hotels over there go to bed and stay there till time to get 
up". That's my belief. 

My guess is that thefts are not frequent in the hotels of Eu- 
rope. The difficulty of making proper disposition of the key, 
between my two room-mates and myself, induced us, from the 
beginning to the end, to leave our door unlocked, and very often 
wide open, with our trunks all open, and half the time our traps 
strewn everywhere ; and yet we never lost an article. Many 
others were just as careless as we were. Still, we heard of no 
one who suffered any loss from theft. It gives me pleasure to 
say this, because it is a pleasing phase of hotel life in Europe. 

Of course we did not like their mode of feeding us. Their 
table a" hote does not suit Americans. It is too tedious and 
consumes too much time. There is not enough freedom about 
it. They stuff you with the things contained in their limited 
bill of fare. It is that or nothing, There is no choice in the 



l68 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

matter. If you don't like the viands or the manner of their 
cooking, you can "lump" it. If the soup don't suit you you 
can "pass" and wait till those who do take soup have all sipped 
what they want, the dishes removed, plates put before each 
guest, and the next course brought along. The meat or its 
cooking may not come up to your ideas. Well, you can "pass" 
that, and sit there and wait and gnash your teeth till all the 
others are through, plates again removed and clean ones brought 
on, and the third dish moves round. And, so, clear through 
the whole category of the eight or nine tedious courses. 

It is true one may merely hire a room and take his meals in 
restaurant style, either in the hotel where he stops, or elsewhere, 
if he chooses. F^ut even then, he will not be able to get so 
gorgeous a meal as will be served up to him in a first class hotel 
here at home. It may be all the better for his stomach that he 
can't do so. Some of our party showed our conductors a bill of 
fare they had of hotels here, and they could hardly be made to 
believe it possible a hotel would give its guests so large a range 
in the matter of articles from which to select a dinner. It ap- 
peared almost incredible that they would be allowed to order 
the whole catalogue at one fell swoop. 

The table a hote style is certainly very economical. There is 
no waste, especially if the waiter who carries around the dish 
serves the plates instead of the guests forking it out themselves. 
There are no scraps to amount to a big sum. Our party, I can 
testify, generally cleared the platter. In this way European 
hotels can avoid big prices. If they were to feed as our hotels 
do the expenses of traveling would necessarily be beyond the 
ability of the average tourist. Much of the meat and butter 
consumed in many parts of the Continent are imported from 
America, and, consequently costs the landlord there more 
money than it costs him here. The cooking is generally satis- 
factory, except, in some places, where they use tallow instead 
of lard in which to fry things. One might even get to admire 
that in time. But we always found elegant coffee. I think 
there was not a single exception to this during our entire jour- 
ney. In this respect they are far ahead of our palatial hotels. 
^ But never a water cooler did we see in any hotel, anywhere, 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 69 

and never did we see a native take a drink of this beverage. 
This was one of the greatest annoyances we had to encounter, 
and we often suffered in consequence of it. 

I had expected to find the people over here big eaters, and 
especially the English. I was disappointed. I am thoroughly 
satisfied Americans eat nearly double the quantity consumed $& 
by the average European. Both, 1 imagine, eat more than 
their systems absolutely require. The surplus is a burden, and 
in proportion to the excess brings bn disease. And for this * 
reason the Continental table d hote is more conducive of health 
if not so palatable. The articles served up are healthy, and 
ample time is given in which to eat. You can't rush through a 
meal as though you were going to the races, or were belated 
and anxious to leave town on the next train. If in all your 
travels you should see a piece of pie or corn bread it would be 
a sio-ht that never greeted us while in Europe. Nor would you 
ever be able to enjoy the luxury of burning your mouth on a 
hot biscuit. You would now and then, no doubt, have the 
amusement of witnessing one of the genteel and highly starched 
waiters lose his balance on the highly polished and waxed floors, 
and come sprawling down with whatever his hands contained at 
the time, but you would not, probably, find an impudent one } 
or very many both blind and deaf to your wants. Nearly all of 
them on the lines of travel understand English sufficiently well 
to comprehend your orders, while the "portier," or manager, 
generally speaks that language fluently. 

I shall speak briefly of railroads. The compartment system 
in the passenger cars doubtless had its origin in the exclusive- 
ness of the citizens. The different classes, of course, followed. 
Even to Americans it is real pleasant for a party of friends to 
get together and be shut off from strangers, or obnoxious pas- 
sengers in a compartment to themselves. I think both first and 
second class carriages are more comfortable than the average 
passenger cars on the roads here at home. They are never 
crowded beyond their seating capacity, and are more comfort- 
able to sit in. Very few travelers in Europe ride in the first-class 
carriages. Americans nearly all do, I fancy they are fearfu \ Q 
if they do not it w,ill be inferred they have not the money to 
22 



X70 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S 

afford the luxury. The chief difference between first and 
second class compartments is. in their upholstering inside. The 
fare by first class is about fifty per cent greater than by the 
second, and second is' about as much greater than the third. 
Traveling by third class cars is not pleasant. 

In all the descriptions I had read of the cars in Europe I had 
not formed a correct idea of them. They are shorter than 
ours, and are divided into three compartments by petitions run- 
ning across the cars from top to bottom. Each contains two 
seats, one facing to the rear and the other to the front, just like 
a two seated carriage here at home. Two doors enter each 
compartment, one on either side.. The seats are divided off by 
cushioned arms, similar to the arms of an old fashioned chair, 
so arranged that they may be turned back, leaving the seat un- 
obstructed from one end to the other. The backs are up- 
holstered clear to the top of the car, and in this respect are de- 
cidedly more comfortable than ours. Over each seat is a long, 
net rack, for hand baggage, besides plenty of room under the 
seats. Facilities for light and ventilation are very good. Each 
compartment is furnished with a lantern at night, inserted from 
the roof. Guards or conductors never enter the cars during 
their occupancy by passengers. A step runs the entire length 
of each car on the outside, similar to the open street cars in 
some cities where the seats run from side to side of the car. 
Guards communicate with passengers through the doors, stand- 
ing on this step. The complement in first-class compartments 
is eight people, four on each seat, and those on one seat facing 
those on another. 

The road beds, the depots, the paraphernalia, and the man- 
agement of roads in Europe are nearly always superb. Great 
attention is paid to the preservation of life. If death occurs 
over there from carelesseness I presume some one has to suffer 
for it. In very few places in England, Scotland- and France 
do railroads cross each other on the same level. One shoots 
over the other on a bridge. Nearly all pikes in those countries, 
also, cross railroads on bridges. In the countries where this is 
not done a watchman is stationed at each crossing, however in- 
significant, to bar the way with a long sweep or pole on the 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 7 '* 

approach of trains, of which they are usually notified by an 
electric alarm. No one, not even a man on foot, is allowed to 
cross the track after the sweep comes down, although no cars 
are in sight. 

Much care is exercised by guards, at the depots, to see that 
passengers do not take the wrong train, and to prevent their 
getting off and on when the cars are in motion. Our party 
often came near throwing these careful men into spasms by our 
utter disregard of the rules of the road, and our apparent indif- 
ference to our' own personal safety. When we wanted to go 
anywhere we generally went, notwithstanding the vehement 
protests of the guards. Two or three oi us might be collared 
and held in some 'sort of subjection, but the others would take 
advantage of the situation and skip around. The principal 
source of annoyance to the guards was our habit of standing 
outside the cars, at the stations, - holding the doors open ready 
to jump in when the train got in motion. This was contrary to 
rules, and the polite and considerate guards would dance up 
and down the train, gently pushing us inside, so that they 
might close the doors and blow their old dinner horn as a signal 
for the engineer to turn on steam. We never once heard the 
cry of "all aboard." In England and Scotland a bell was rung 
a few minutes before starting time and we were told in our ver- 
nacular, "take your seats. " Elsewhere they likewise rang the 
bell and used some kind of lin^o, but we never knew what it 
was though we guessed it meant "get in." 

There is no system of "through" tickets in Europe, and one 
can not check his baggage, both of which are a nuisance. One 
can only buy a ticket to the end of the road over which he starts 
on his journey, and if he has a trunk he must be at the depot 
quite a while before train time in order to get it aboard. At 
the end of that road he must claim it, and if he continues his 
journey he must go through all this routine^again. He has not 
the happy privilege of handing his check to a baggage man and 
whirling away to the hotel for his baggage to follow him. And 
they look out for extra baggage, allowing but 56 pounds, in 
some countries, and charging heavily for all over that weight. 
Hand baggage is not counted, and it was, doubtless, for that 



17.2. TRK BIG AMERICAS! CARAVANS 

reason we saw native travelers often lugging two great big 
valises into the carriages with them. 

And the cars have no saloons for .ladies, or gentlemen either, 
which Americans regard as a woful want. One can hardly 
imagine the discomforts that arise from this omission. It seems 
that an enlightened people would have long ago corrected the 
error. Nor is there any provision for water, as I wrote in a pre- 
vious letter. Our skirmishes after this article were frequently 
a laughable part of our junketings. I don't think any of us saw 
a water cooler in all Europe. I suspect if one was set up, even 
in a hotel in Paris or London, the citizens would not divine its 
use. They wash clothes with water, and doubtless cook with it, 
and, perhaps, now and then, give it to their stock, but precious 
little do the people drink themselves 

As a matter of some interest it may not be amiss to give you 
a better idea of our mode of travel than could be gathered from 
my previous letters. As I wrote you from London, our party 
for the greater part of the time we were in Scotland numbered 
about 220 persons. The baggage was then all intact, and its 
quantity was simply enormous. On the steamer, while cross- 
ing the ocean, three of the sections intending to make the long 
tour, were organized by the members of the party making their 
own selections, the result being generally satisfactory. Then 
there was the short section, composed of those going no further 
than Switzerland. One section had already gotten under way 
for Italy! Before entering the Firth of Clyde a boat brought 
out a pilot, and with it came an agent of Henry Gaze & Son, 
Tourist Contractors, of London, who at once organized the 
members of each section into parties of one, two and three each, 
who desired to room together during the journey on land, 
stating that the larger rooms, containing as many as three beds, 
would be found the most desirable. He even went so far as to 
state that he would try and have any two squads put in adjoining 
rooms where they so desired it. I will illustrate : 

A lady from Boston, another from Pennsylvania and the "lit- 
tle one " wanted to room together, while another lady and her 
daughter wanted an adjoining room. These names were entered 
in the agent's list in the order I have mentioned them ; then 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1/3 

brackets thrown around the first three names and the last two 
respectively, and another bracket around them all to indicate 
the wants of these people. , This enabled them to enter into a 
species of co-partnership in the matter of soap, brushes, combs, 
trunks and the like that proved a matter of convenience in many 
ways ; but principally in the reduction of baggage to the mini- 
mum, thus making the daily " packing up " a less serious mat- 
ter. My guess is that every trunk and valise in the party 
had some article of furniture belonging to the others, all of 
which was straightened up in the grand . clearing house — the 
Inns of Court Hotel, on our return to London. 

Then came the arrangement for the baggage. The roaming 
squads of each section were numbered, and different colors 
adopted to represent the section. Blue fell to our section. 
The numbers given these squads were written opposite the 
respective names on the list, and then a number of the lists 
were printed, and a copy sent ahead to each hotel where we 
were to stop, on a day already fixed. Then upon the baggage, 
not carried in the hand, were pasted the numbers corresponding 
with those given each squad, so that rooms at hotels might be 
assigned and the baggage deposited in them by the numbers, 
and not by the names of the owners. In addition to this, linen 
tags were distributed for the proper dddress of the owners, and 
to be attached to every piece, whether satchel, shawl, valise or 
trunk. On the reverse side of these tags instructions in Ger- 
man, French and English were printed for the disposition of the 
article to which it was attached, in case it went astray — that 
was to express it to Henry Gaze & Son, London, at their ex- 
pense. In such event they would be able, at once, to forward 
it to the owners. 

Upon arriving at London from Scotland all the trunks not 
required for the tour were taken by these gentlemen to their 
own warehouse, and those pieces not carried in the hand, but 
which had to go in the baggage car, were numbered in white 
paint, with the section and squad, to avoid erasure. During 
the entire trip, as has been seen from previous letters, we were 
actively on the move nearly all the time, and yet there was but 
one detention in all that time, which, in that instance, was 



1 74 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN S 

caused by a blunder in a railroad. On the contrary, we gener- 
ally found, on reaching the hotels, our rooms already assigned, 
and the trunks in them, unstrapped, ready for opening. A 
young Englishman by the name of T. G Mill had charge of 
the baggage, in addition to other minor details, and to his 
energy and continued watchfulness we were indebted to the 
great relief experienced by freedom from all care, with refer- 
ence to a matter which, at all times, and in all lands, has been 
a source of so much care and anxiety to independent travelers. 
The only attention we bestowed upon our trunks was to pack 
and fasten them in our rooms, and leave them there. 

Mr. E. McQueen Gray was our chief conductor, interpreter, 
guide, cashier and companion. In all he was royal. I doubt 
if a better man could have been selected. He was a Scotchman 
by birth, but had been a resident of London during the last few 
years, and for a greater part of the time in the employ of 
Henry Gaze & Son. I do-not know how many languages he 
spoke, but he seemed at home wherever he went. He was 
remarkably patient with our troublesome party, and was never 
discovered out of humor at things, which, it seemed to me, would 
have annoyed a saint. In a nice little speech, made to us by Mr. . 
Gaze, as we sat at the table in our hotel in London, he spoke 
of Mr. Gray as one of the best men. to be found in all England 
for the position. It was he who had come aboard our ship, and 
who had conducted us through Scotland- and his native High- 
lands, and it did not require this eulogy from his employer to 
make us appreciate the man. He was a person of rare infor- 
mation, and there was a fund of wit and good humor about him 
that even quieted, in a great measure, the grumblers of our party. 
He planned our campaigns ahead, and, at the dinner table in 
the evening, announced the programme for the morrow, the 
time for getting up, the hours for meals, the time for leaving 
the hotels, and whether we would need lunch between meals, 
and when and where we would get it. He paid our bills and 
kept an account against each, thus saving ' us the annoyance 
caused by the constant change from the use of one kind of 
money to another, and did many other useful things for us that 
would have caused an independent tourist much lossof time and 



TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 1 75 

anxiety to have looked after himself. If, hereafter, I should 
hear of any of my friends making a tour • of that country, I 
would he very glad to learn they had fallen under the conduc- 
torship of Mr. Gray. And I say these things of him the more 
cheerfully, because he so well deserves them, and because, at 
one time on the tour, I got cross towards him, and said ugly 
things about him. I guess my digestive organs were out of re- 
pair, for, sitting here in my home, and looking back at the 
wirey, patient, hard -worked and always willing conductor, I see 
how greatly our section were favored by having him to look 
after us. I feel sure if he were to come over here we would all 
be disposed to give him a very hearty greeting. 

I like the manner in which we traveled. There were a few 
minor disadvantages connected with it, but I think those were 
largely overbalanced by the absolute advantages. Porters and 
servants did not bother us; hackmen did not fleece us; there 
were no hotel extras, except such as we knowingly and pur- 
posely made; our local guides were all provided when necessary, 
and fees for admission to sights all paid ; the best things to be 
seen were culled from the long list, and no time lost in hunting 
them up ; and such careful provision was made for all our move- 
ments that we could give ourselves over to the full enjoyment 
of the novelties surrounding us. Besides, we had lots of fun 
among ourselves. In the long trip together we got to be some- ^ 
what like a big family, and were good company for each other 
when surfeited with sight seeing. 

I speak now of people who desire to see as much of Europe 
as possible for the least money, people who are not able to af- „ 
ford an expensive trip. Many of those with us were teachers 
and scholars and had to make this tour during their vacation. * 
The cost of the tour from New York and back was $500, and it 
was not absolutely necessary for any member to spend $50 
over that sum, though most of them did it. Washing was the 
only absolute extra, boots, even, being blacked, without charge, @ 
at the hotels. I think an independent tourist could not go over 
the same ground we did and see what we saw for less than 
$1,000, and short of a month or two greater length of time. Of 
course, if one has plenty of money, and time is no considera* 



1^6 THE BIG AMERICAN CARAVAN'S TOUR THROUGH EUROPE. 

tion, and he had just as soon be alone as in company, he would 
certainly go alone and take it leisurely. But, for my own part, 
I would not give five cents to go trudging over Europe, or any 
other country, among a people whose language I; could not 
understand, and having no one along to help me admire the 
sights. I can not even enjoy fishing or huntiug, my chief hob- 
bies, when by myself. 

And thus I close my last letter. 



